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Join us this week for a wildly entertaining conversation with André Hueston Mack, winemaker and owner of Maison Noire Wines! André brings his signature blend of passion and humor to our podcast, sharing stories from his time as sommelier at The French Laundry and helping to open Per Se. As he says, "The greatest foil to pretension is humor" - and he lives that mantra with his Kick-Ass Garage Wines from Oregogne (yes, that's a French nod to Burgundy). Click the link below and give these wines a try! #HappyFriday! #ItsWineTime! #Cheersing Please visit https://maisonnoirwines.com/wine-shop/ to check out ALL of the Maison Noir wines!Wines this episode:2022 Maison Noir Wines "New Noir" Willamette Valley Orange Wine ($25 at the winery)2023 Maison Noir Wines "Bastardo Jackson" Willamette Valley Trousseau Noir ($30 at the winery)2022 Maison Noir Wines "Free Gamay" Willamette Valley Gamay Noir ($30 at the winery) 2022 Maison Noir Wines "Gamma Ray" Willamette Valley Red Wine ($30 at the winery) A HUGE thanks to our sponsors: Liberty Lake Wine Cellars and CDA Gourmet!Liberty Lake Wine Cellars: Looking for amazing wine? Taste Liberty Lake Wine Cellars' big, bold reds from Red Mountain, along with their delightful Tahija whites and Rosés. Join their Wine Club for exclusive benefits including their Thursday Wine Club night. Get all the details at https://www.libertylakewinecellars.com/ or call 509-255-9205. Liberty Lake Wine Cellars: Celebrating 20 years of making exceptional Washington wine!CDA Gourmet: Are you looking to elevate your kitchen? You need to check out CDA Gourmet! Located in Midtown Coeur d'Alene, just down the street from Pilgrim's Market, CDA Gourmet offers a diverse mix of flavor enhancing product as well as the tools to make it all happen. Visit https://www.cdagourmet.com for more information or call 208-551-2364. CDA Gourmet: Your kitchen elevatedAnd of course, a HUGE thank you to Tod Hornby who wrote and recorded our official Wine Time Fridays theme music. Please visit https://todhornby.com to see what Tod is up to!The Pilgrim's Market Wine Words of the Week - Garage Wines Garage Wines are characterized by small-scale, artisanal production, often in a "garage" or small facility.Pilgrim's Market: Check out Pilgrim's Market for an expansive selection of fine wines with wine club prices EVERY day, weekly complimentary tastings and just up the street from CDA Gourmet! Visit pilgrimsmarket.com or call 208-676-9730!Some wines we've enjoyed this week: Ridge Vineyards Three Valleys, Chevalier de la Crée Montagny Premier Cru, Geografico Le Mire Toscana Bianco, Simi Chardonnay, Domaine Bersan Les Ouches Chablis, Oyster Bay Chardonnay, Emmolo Merlot and Far Niente Chardonnay.Mentions: Red Hook Tavern, Vaso CellarsPlease find us on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/WineTimeFridays), Twitter (@VintageTweets), Instagram (@WineTimeFridays) on our YouTube Channel, https://www.youtube.com/@winetimefridays and on Threads, which is @winetimefridays. You can also “Follow” Phil on Vivino. His profile name is Phil Anderson and will probably “Follow” you back! © 2025 Wine Time Fridays - All Rights Reserved
Silver47 Exploration Corp CEO Gary Thompson joined Steve Darling from Proactive to announce a major development: Silver47 and Summa Silver Corp have entered into a definitive arrangement agreement to merge the two companies via a court-approved plan of arrangement. Upon completion, the combined entity will retain the name Silver47 Exploration Corp, signaling a unified brand underpinned by a strategic vision for silver exploration and development. Thompson emphasized that the merger positions the company for enhanced access to capital markets, stronger operational capabilities, and greater investor visibility. The newly combined company will boast an impressive portfolio of high-grade, silver-rich projects across top-tier U.S. mining jurisdictions, including Alaska, Nevada, and New Mexico. Collectively, the companies' assets contain an estimated 10 million ounces silver equivalent (AgEq) in Indicated resources at an average grade of 333 g/t AgEq, and 236 million ounces AgEq in Inferred resources averaging 334 g/t AgEq. With strong geological potential, the combined company is well positioned to pursue significant resource expansion and future consolidation opportunities within the sector. In conjunction with the transaction, Summa and Silver47 have also entered into an engagement letter agreement with Research Capital Corporation and Haywood Securities to conduct a brokered private placement. The offering aims to raise up to CAD $5 million in gross proceeds, further supporting the growth and exploration plans of the merged company. Those proceeds will be put to use on the Red Mountain project in Alaska. This flagship project currently holds 168.00 million ounces of silver equivalent, and Thompson emphasized the company's plan to expand that resource through a new drilling campaign. Thompson described the transaction as a "transformational step forward" that aligns both companies' goals of becoming a leading silver exploration and development company in North America. #proactiveinvestors #silver47explorationcorp #tsx #exn #mining #MiningMerger #SilverExploration #RedMountainProject #SilverStocks #JuniorMining #ResourceGrowth #PEA #TSXV #MiningNews #AlaskaMining #NevadaSilver #NewMexicoMining
American Rare Earths CEO Chris Gibbs joined Steve Darling from Proactive to announce new assay results from the company's ongoing mapping and channel sampling program at the Cowboy State Mine area of the Halleck Creek Rare Earths Project in Wyoming. The results further confirm the project's potential to become a major U.S.-based source of critical minerals. Gibbs shared that a total of 106 channel samples were collected across the Red Mountain area, a key target within the Halleck Creek project. Assay results revealed elevated levels of rare earth mineralization, with one standout sample grading 1.37% Total Rare Earth Oxide (TREO). Across the Red Mountain Pluton — the rare earth-bearing lithology — TREO grades ranged from 711 parts per million (ppm) to 13,651 ppm, with an average of 3,661 ppm. Notably, the company reported that magnet rare earth oxides, which are essential for high-performance magnets used in electric vehicles and wind turbines, account for approximately 28% of the total rare earth content. Heavy rare earth oxides, which are typically rarer and more valuable, represent about 13%. Fifteen of the collected samples exceeded 4,500 ppm TREO, further underscoring the presence of elevated-grade zones within the Red Mountain system. The company is currently incorporating the new channel sampling data into an updated geological model and mineral resource estimate for the CSM area. These updates will inform the ongoing mine planning process and play a key role in the upcoming Pre-Feasibility Study, which remains on track for completion in late 2025. #proactiveinvestors #americanrareearthslimited #asx #arr #otcqx #arrnf #adr #amrry #wyomingrareinc #AmericanRareEarths #HalleckCreek #CowboyStateMine #CriticalMinerals #Neodymium #Praseodymium #Yttrium #Dysprosium #MiningUpdate #PFS #ChannelSampling #ProactiveInvestors
Love softball? Well this is the episode for you! On this episode of the Red Mountain Radio, get to know the Red Mountain softball team with varsity athletes Peyton Westra and Kendall Cochran! Tune in to see impressive trivia, fun stories, and interesting behind the scenes insights, right here, right now, on the Red Mountain Radio!Make sure to follow us to catch the most recent sports insiders! The next episode is Track and Field, where we will interview THREE athletes! Catch this exclusive and more on the spring sports season of the Red Mountain Radio!If you or your organization is interested in appearing on the podcast, email us at: redmtnradio@gmail.com Follow us on Instagram @redmtnradio for behind the scenes updates!Hosted by: Brooklyn AnayaStarring: Kendall Cochran, Peyton Westra
We are so excited to be able to sit down and chat with Marcial Mendez from Red Mountain Herp! Will be talking about his journey with reptiles, including the albino chondro, Amazon tree boas, and much more! You won't wanna miss this!FIND Marcial on IG: / redmountainherp Reptile Talk is Sponsored by:BLACK BOX CAGES**USE CODE - REPTILETALK and SAVE on your next order!!! **Website:https://bit.ly/BLKBoxIG:https://bit.ly/BLKBOXIGFacebook:https://bit.ly/BLKBOXFBFOLLOW USARKUSARK.orgIG - @usark_officialFB - United States Association of Reptile KeepersFIND US ON IGhttps://bit.ly/ReptileTalkIGhttps://bit.ly/creepingitrealIGhttps://bit.ly/BMRIGFIND US ON FBhttps://bit.ly/ReptiletalkFB
30 - Love! In the second edition of the Fall Sports Season Insider, we get all the funny and compassionate moments from varsity girls tennis athlete Christina Westover, and JV boys tennis athlete Lincoln Hall! Learn more about all the fun activities the Red Mountain tennis team gets in to (Yes, including soda-soaked socks)! Listen in and don't miss this amazing episode with Christina and Lincoln from RMHS tennis! [Red Mountain T.V., Red Mountain Radio, and any other affiliates do not endorse throwing any type of articles of clothing, covered in soda or otherwise, in any scenario]This is just the beginning of the spring sports season here at Red Mountain, so never miss out on sick behind the scenes insights and exclusive interviews, only on the Red Mountain Radio's Spring Sports Insider!If you or your organization is interested in appearing on the podcast, email us at: redmtnradio@gmail.com Follow us on Instagram @redmtnradio for behind the scenes updates!Hosted by: Brooklyn AnayaStarring: Lincoln Hall, Christina Westover
In today's Undivided Birmingham podcast, Dr. Chris Crain interviews Austin Hardison, executive director of Red Mountain Grace. Red Mountain Grace provides safe, clean, and affordable apartments to patients and their families receiving long-term medical care at hospitals throughout the city of Birmingham. Red Mountain Grace has 20 fully furnished apartments and has served over 1,000 families since 2013. There are many ways that churches can be involved at Red Mountain Grace, including adopting an apartment and volunteering through cleaning, celebrating milestones, catering, and ministering to families. Learn more about Red Mountain Grace at https://www.redmountaingrace.org/.
In 2008 we set out to start a winery with a specific vision: to embody the soul of wine from vineyard to bottle to table. Our philosophy is that wine should be accessible, approachable, and affordable. But most of all, we believe a wine's purpose is to bring together family and friends!With 10 years of viticulture and winemaking experience in Washington State, we know a thing or two about making wine. For starters, Purple Star's varietal blends are grown from some of Washington State's finest appellations including Wahluke Slope, Yakima Valley and Red Mountain. With grapes handpicked at their optimal flavor profile and juice fermented at cooler temperatures for longer periods, our wines exhibit softer tannins and retain more varietal character.
Red Mountain Rescue #RTTBROS #Nightlight Red Mountain Rescue "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ." - Galatians 6:2 (KJV)In February 2025, a father and his 12-year-old son became stranded on a cliff in Utah's Red Mountain area. As temperatures dropped, they stumbled upon a backpack left by a hiker weeks earlier. Inside were emergency supplies—water, food, and blankets—that sustained them until rescuers arrived. The backpack had been abandoned by Levi Dittmann, a teen who had also been stranded in the same area but left the pack behind to lighten his load during his rescue. Levi later expressed gratitude that his loss became someone else's lifeline.This story reminds us of our Christian responsibility to help others with the resources God has given us. Just as Levi's supplies saved lives, we are called to share what we have to rescue those in need—spiritually, emotionally, or physically.When God rescues us from our trials, it is not just for our benefit but also so we can assist others. Whether it's sharing wisdom from our experiences, offering material aid, or extending compassion, our actions can become a lifeline for someone else. Let us remember that helping others fulfills God's law of love.Application: Reflect on how you can use your blessings to support others in their struggles. Like Levi's backpack, what you offer may be exactly what someone needs for their rescue.Citations: https://economictimes.com/magazines/panache/lost-and-found-how-an-abandoned-backpack-saved-a-father-and-son-stranded-in-the-utahs-Be sure to Like, Share, Follow and subscribe it helps get the word out.https://linktr.ee/rttbros
Three of Red Mountain's elders field questions submitted by our young adults on membership.
Like many of you, my wife Suzie is having anxiety over things that are going on. So we sat down for our first episode of Code Red: Mountain Suze.
In this episode, we chat with Spencer Cole, CDO and CFO of Xanadu Mines, a copper exploration company with projects in the South Gobi and Western Mongolia. They aim to develop porphyry and intrusion-related deposits and are committed to Mongolia and its potential as one of the last great copper frontiers. Spencer has qualification in Mech and Material Eng (BS), Business & Finance (MBA), Finance (CPA) and has worked in various industries including mining, aerospace, Oil & Gas across the Americas, Australia, and SE Asia. He’s been with Xanadu for coming up to 5 years now and gives us an overview of the company, their flagship project Kharmagtai and will educate us more on the Lassonde Curve and how that has an impact on the company plus much more. KEY TAKEAWAYS Xanadu Mines is an ASX and TSX-listed exploration company focused on copper and gold in Mongolia, with its flagship project, Kharmagtai, currently at the Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS) stage. The company has transitioned from coal exploration to copper and gold since 2013-2014. The Lassonde curve illustrates the typical life cycle of a junior mining company, showing how market capitalisation fluctuates through different stages of project development. Xanadu's journey reflects this curve, having experienced peaks and troughs as it moved from exploration to commercialisation. Hermagti faces challenges such as funding, permitting, and the need to identify high-grade zones to minimise negative cash flow. However, opportunities exist in the form of potential sequential heap leaching of weathered deposits and the possibility of expanding the resource through further drilling. Zijin Mining, a top global copper and gold miner, has partnered with Xanadu to advance the Kharmagtai project. This partnership is seen as beneficial due to Zijin's experience in advanced metallurgy and their aggressive growth model, which aligns with Xanadu's goals. Over the next 6 to 12 months, Xanadu aims to complete a bankable feasibility study for Kharmagtai and navigate the Mongolian permitting process. The company is also exploring funding options and planning further exploration activities for its other projects, Sant. Tolgoi and Red Mountain. BEST MOMENTS "Xanadu is an ASX and TSX, so dual listed exploration company... focused on copper and gold in Mongolia." "The Lassonde curve illustrates the typical life cycle of a junior mining company, showing its market capitalisation over the different stages of development." "Kharmagtai is a big, low-grade copper-gold porphyry. Its economics work on scale, low strip ratio, and byproduct credits." "Zijin is a top five copper miner... they have a very aggressive growth model and are really experienced at building value through advanced metallurgy." VALUABLE RESOURCES Mail: rob@mining-international.org LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-tyson-3a26a68/ X: https://twitter.com/MiningRobTyson YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DigDeepTheMiningPodcast Web: http://www.mining-international.org This episode is sponsored by Hawcroft, leaders in property risk management since 1992. They offer: Insurance risk surveys recognised as an industry standard Construction risk reviews Asset criticality assessments and more Working across over 600 sites globally, Hawcroft supports mining, processing, smelting, power, refining, ports, and rail operations. For bespoke property risk management services, visit www.hawcroft.com GUEST SOCIALS Website: www.xanadumines.com X/Twitter: @XanaduMines_ASX Linkedin: au.linkedin.com/company/Xanadu-mines-limited Email: spencer.cole@xanadumines.com ABOUT THE HOST Rob Tyson is the Founder and Director of Mining International Ltd, a leading global recruitment and headhunting consultancy based in the UK specialising in all areas of mining across the globe from first-world to third-world countries from Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia. We source, headhunt, and discover new and top talent through a targeted approach and search methodology and have a proven track record in sourcing and positioning exceptional candidates into our clients' organisations in any mining discipline or level. Mining International provides a transparent, informative, and trusted consultancy service to our candidates and clients to help them develop their careers and business goals and objectives in this ever-changing marketplace. CONTACT METHOD rob@mining-international.org https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-tyson-3a26a68/ Podcast Description Rob Tyson is an established recruiter in the mining and quarrying sector and decided to produce the “Dig Deep” The Mining Podcast to provide valuable and informative content around the mining industry. He has a passion and desire to promote the industry and the podcast aims to offer the mining community an insight into people’s experiences and careers covering any mining discipline, giving the listeners helpful advice and guidance on industry topics.
Zach looks at four passages from the New Testament that imply something like church membership to enable churches to obey what is explicitly commanded of them. Then, Zach interviews Jonas and Kayla Perry on their experience being members at Red Mountain.
Proactive's Tylah Tully breaks down ‘Just the Facts' of the latest news from American Rare Earths Ltd. ARR has announced a 12.2% increase in the total mineral resource estimate for its Halleck Creek Rare Earth Project in Wyoming, bringing the total to 2.63 billion tonnes at 3,926 ppm Total Rare Earth Oxides (TREO). This update reinforces Halleck Creek's position as one of the largest rare earth deposits in North America. The Red Mountain Area within Halleck Creek has seen a 29.7% increase in resources to 1.24 billion tonnes, with an 8.3% uplift in grade to 3,252 ppm TREO. The Cowboy State Mine, which represents the first phase of development at Red Mountain, has grown by 29.4% to 543 million tonnes, with a 2.7% improvement in grade to 3,438 ppm TREO. The deposit remains open at depth and along strike, with the current resource estimate covering only 16% of the overall project area, suggesting significant expansion potential. Halleck Creek is strategically positioned to support US efforts for domestic critical mineral independence. Its favourable geology and near-surface mineralisation offer potential for low-cost open-pit operations. Ongoing metallurgical test work has demonstrated efficient processing methods for rare earths, further enhancing the project's economic viability. The updated resource estimate will be incorporated into an updated scoping study, scheduled for release in February 2025, and a pre-feasibility study to be completed later this year. ARR emphasised that Halleck Creek's scale, growth and strategic importance make it a cornerstone project in the US rare earth supply chain, supporting economic growth and national security goals. #AmericanRareEarths #HalleckCreek #RareEarths #MiningWyoming #CriticalMinerals #USMineralIndependence #ResourceExpansion #RareEarthMining #MiningNews #WyomingMining #ScopingStudy #PreFeasibilityStudy #CriticalMetals #USSupplyChain #EconomicGrowth #RareEarthDeposits #MineralProcessing #MiningProjects #StrategicResources #DomesticSupply
American Rare Earths CEO Chris Gibbs joined Steve Darling from Proactive to share a major milestone update on the Halleck Creek Rare Earth Project in Wyoming. The latest JORC-compliant Mineral Resource Estimate confirms Halleck Creek as one of North America's largest rare earth deposits, reinforcing the company's progress in unlocking its potential as a strategic U.S. asset. Gibbs announced that the Halleck Creek resource has now surpassed 2.63 billion tonnes, marking a significant 12.2% increase over the previous estimate. This expansion underscores the project's transformational scalability, with mineralization still open at depth and along strike. The Cowboy State Mine, situated in the Red Mountain area on Wyoming State land, benefits from a streamlined permitting process, accelerating the project's development timeline. With favorable geology and near-surface mineralization, the site presents strong potential for a low-cost open-pit mining operation. Concurrently, ongoing metallurgical test work continues to demonstrate the project's ability to process rare earth elements efficiently. These advancements further align ARR with U.S. government efforts to secure domestic critical mineral independence, reducing reliance on imports while fostering economic growth and strengthening national security. The company is now integrating the latest resource estimates and high-grade data into its Scoping Study, which is on track for completion and release in February 2025. #proactiveinvestors #americanrareearthslimited #asx #arr #otcqx #arrnf #adr #amrry #wyomingrareinc
Cut into the “Roots of Success” as we sit down with Andrya Rytter-O'Brien, the visionary owner of Level 7 Salon in Bothell, Washington. In this episode of TLC, Tend Life Community Podcast, we explore how Andrya has built more than just a salon—she's cultivated a community-driven business rooted in personalized client care and a passion for creativity. Andrya shares the challenges and triumphs of growing a successful salon, the importance of intentional listening, and how collaboration and continuous education help her team exceed client expectations. We also discuss ways clients, new and returning can maximize their salon experience for cuts and colors that truly dazzle. We start the show with the Sipping on Success segment, we toast to Andrya's success with a bottle of Fidelitas 2021 Red Mountain. And don't miss our Real Estate Roundup, where we dig into planting tips to boost your home's curb appeal. From beauty tips to business insights, this episode has something for everyone. Tune in to hear how Andrya is shaping the local salon scene and discover actionable ideas to elevate your own success—whether it's in business or in life. Cheers to finding your roots and growing your potential!
Last time we continued to speak about the insane battle over Southern Xinjiang. In Yarkland, chaos erupted as inflation soared, prompting Chinese officials to retreat to fortified New City. Panic led to desperate measures, including the use of dummy figures for defense. As insurgents advanced, Colonel Chin's forces looted and fled, sparking violence against Uyghurs and Hindu moneylenders. By April, rebel forces captured Kashgar, fracturing Chinese control. Amid shifting alliances, Ma Chanzeng sought power, but internal strife among leaders like Temur culminated in further violence and betrayal, with power ultimately shifting to the Khotanlik provisional government under Muhammad Amin Bughra. Abdullah's revelation ignited conflict among Muslim troops. The Uyghurs and Kirghiz briefly united against the Chinese, ultimately capturing the New City. As tensions rose, massacres occurred, fracturing alliances and leading to a power struggle. After the execution of Uyghur leader Temur, Abdullah seized control of Yarkland, while charismatic Tawfiq Bay rallied forces against the Tungans. Eventually, the Khotan Amirs dominated the region, achieving unity amidst chaos, leaving only the besieged Tungans at bay. #135 Kumul Rebellion part 4: The reunification of Xinjiang Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. Do you remember Ma Chongying, basically the guy that started most of this madness? Following him getting severely wounded at Liaotun in autumn of 1932, he had withdrawn the majority of his forces to his old domain in northwestern Gansu. He set up a HQ at Anxi and through his subordinates began expanding territory and increasing recruitment via conscription. The British missionaries Mildred Cable and Francesca French were living in Tunhuang at the time and wrote extensively about Ma Congying's recruitment efforts “The town was robbed of everything in the nature of food, goods and money ... next to food the most coveted possessions of the oases were the young, vigorous, hardy men ... These were the men whom Ma Chung-ying wanted for gun fodder, and orders were issued to the press-gang to fetch them in from every farm of the neighborhood, and collect them in Tunhuang City. Every day we saw them being rounded up. The ropes which they themselves had twisted from desert grass were used to tie their hands behind their backs, and to noose their necks in a running-knot. Roped together in droves of twenty to thirty, according to the success of the raid, they were brought to town by captors who rode the horses levied from these boys' own stables. Thrust behind the high palings of temple courtyards, the imprisoned youths lined the barriers, looking out for some passers-by who might belong to their own group of farmsteads and would take a report home that son or husband had been captured”. After initial training at Tunhuang, the recruits were taken to Anxi for further training. Cable and French were ordered to Anxi to aid Ma Chongying with his wounds and to take care of other Tungans who reportedly had been injured by fire arrows during the siege of Kumul Old City. They did a good job as within a short amount of time Ma Chongying was able to ride again. Back in Xinjiang, following the failed Uyghur led rebellion at Kumul and facing another imminent Tungant invasion in the Turfan area Jin Shujen turned increasingly to the USSR for help. In September of 1931 he bought two biplanes for the Soviets at 40,000 Mexican silver dollars each. The planes came with two Russian pilots and on October 1st, Jin signed a secret trade deal with the USSR allowing 8 Soviet trading agencies to set up shop in Urumqi, Chuguchak, Kashgar, Kulja, Aksu, Kucha, Khotan and Yarkland. Customs duties on Soviets goods were reduced and a new Xinjiang-Soviet telegraph line and radio communications were established. Jin signed these deals illegally without notifying Nanjing and in return received economic and military assistance from the Soviets. In July of 1932 he would receive another 8 aircraft. Yet despite the Soviet assistance, Jin's provincial forces with the exception of Peppengut's White Russian detachment remained ill trained and ill officered. Following the relief of Kumul Old City and Ma Chongyings retreat back to Gansu, Chang Peiyuan, the provincial commander in chief and military governor of Ili went to Urumqi. It appears that Jin did not fully trust Chang Peiyuan, possibly fearing that the victory at Kumul had stirred up dangerous ambitions in Chang. This distrust seemed to be mutual, as Chang, upon receiving orders to transfer to the provincial capital, chose to defy them and returned to Ili in an act bordering on open rebellion. In response, Jin appointed Sheng Shihtsai, Chang's Chief-of-Staff during the Kumul campaign, as the new Provincial Commander-in-Chief. This decision would have significant implications both for Jin's future and for the future of Xinjiang. Sheng Shihtsai was born in 1895 in Liaoning Manchuria. He was the son of a small landowner. In 1917 he traveled to Japan to study political economics at Waseda University and came back to China in 1919 to participate in the May 4th movement. During that time he developed radical and anti-Japanese stances. He then joined the military training school in Guangdong and later enrolled in the northeastern military academy. He entered military service under Guo Songling, haha that old cry baby, who was deputy under Zhang Zuolin. Sheng Shihtsai rose through the ranks becoming a Lt Colonel. In 1924 Guo Songling sponsored Sheng's admission to the Shikan Gakko military academy in Japan. Sheng returned briefly to help Guo Songlings failed coup against Zhang Zuolin, but was able to escape imprisonment with support from Feng Yuxiang and Chiang Kai-Shek. They got him a ticket back to Japan, and he returned to China in 1927 to participate in the northern expedition as a staff officer attached to Chiang Kai-Sheks HQ. After the northern expedition, he was made chief of war operations section of the General staff at Nanjing, but in 1929 resigned as he did not get along with his superiors. After all of this he took an interest in China's border defences. At the time a delegation from Xinjiang visited Nanjing searching for financial aid. Jin Shujen had instructed one of his delegates, Kuang Lu the deputy General secretary of Xinjiang, to find an able bodied officer to help reorganize Xinjiang's military. Kuang Lu fished around and found Sheng who looked like a very promising man. Sheng then traveled via the USSR arriving to Urumqi in the winter of 1929. His initial welcome was a luke warm one as Jin was suspicious of this highly qualified overseas educated man, obviously seeing him as a potential threat. Moreover, Jin's brother Jin Shuxin hated Sheng's appointment because the man outshined him. Despite the jealousy, Jin was basically grasping at straws and needed the help so he made Sheng the chief of staff over the Xinjiang Frontier Army and also the instructor at the provincial military college. In the words of historian Chan Fooklam “Sheng's appointment was like Jin burying a time bomb under his bed, he had brought upon himself his own doom”. Despite receiving aid from the Soviets and British, Jin's grip over Xinjiang was slipping away. In May of 1932 Ma Chongying had dispatched Ma Shuming to take over the Tungan operation against Turfan. As we talked about, Ma Fuming, leading the provincial forces at Turfan simply defected. Also at this time Chang Peiyuan's insubordination was breaking out, easing the way for Sheng to be promoted to commander in chief. Sheng was directing an unsuccessful campaign against Uyghur insurgents at Karlik Tagh. Following news of Ma Fumings defection and the Tungan capture of Turfan, Sheng advanced west from Kumul to try and prevent the combined Muslim forces from marching upon Urumqi. After a bloody two day battle he recaptured Turfan, but this has little effect over Ma Shuming who had already moved his HQ to Kara Shahr. During mid-winter, Ma Shuming's Tungan cavalry and Ma Fumings Turkic insurgents began an advance to Urumqi. At some point a force of provincial troops sent to Urumqi by Jin, specifically to guard the Dawan Cheng Pass were ambushed and annihilated by the Tungans. Meanwhile full scale rebellions had broken out at Kucha led by Temur and at Khotan led by the Amirs. To this Jin responded by expanding Pappenguts White Russian detachment from its original strength of 250 to 1500 men. The White Russians, most of whom came from Ili Valley, had literally no choice but to enlist. Alongside threatening any White Russians with deportation to the USSR, Jin also arrested many Russian women to compel their husbands to enlist. By early January of 1933, Ma Shumings Tungans had crossed the Dawan Cheng and were now operating at will in the Chaiwupao corridor, to the immediate south of the capital. Wu Aichen the political envoy on behalf of Nanjing reported on January 29th, that the city gates were suddenly closed and a month of food shortages and communal tensions rose. Wu Aichen would witness the brutality of the war. In his reports, the Tungans advanced towards the city during the night, seizing the Great West Bridge after a heavy fight. The Provincial commander defending the city only had 700 troops under him and if it was not for 300 White Russian troops suddenly arriving, the city most likely would have fallen then. Wu Aichen described the White Russian troops as superb fighters, albeit savagely drunk as they drove back the Tungan and Uyghurs during two days of hand to hand combat. Meanwhile Tungans had captured the radio station and a nearby height called Devil's Hill which overlooked the Urumqi suburbs. The Chinese officials feared letting in any more Muslim civilians to the Old City, thus they kept the city gates causing large numbers of refugees from the suburbs to gather outside the walls. This was particularly evident at the west gate which became the focal point of the fighting. Wu Aichen witnessed much of it and had this to say. “In times of peace this street was one of the most prosperous in the city, but now it was crowded With innocent fugitives, whose plight was terrible indeed. There was was worse to come, however, for now the advancing rebels came to this quarter and seizing the houses made loop-holes in the walls. In the flat roofs they set up machine-gun posts which could enfilade Government positions on either side of them. I could see for myself that the situation was desperate and that our troops would be pinned against the walls. General Pai, who was in command, did not hesitate. He gave the order that the street of the small religion should be set on fire. Then followed a scene so frightful that the reader's imagination must suffice. As the flames swept down the long lane of wooden structures they became an inferno of horror, for the roar of the conflagration was added to the rattle of gunfire, .and the hideous shrieks of those who were trapped. The rebels sought safety in flight, and as they crossed the open were machine-gunned from the Red Mountain; but the fugitives had nowhere to fly to and perished to the last man, woman and child. Nevertheless the city was saved, and when at last the flames died down the approach to the West Bridge was strewn with the bodies of our assailants. On the evening of the second day I had completed ten thousand words of copying. I asked how many were dead. I was told at least two thousand. Once again I returned to my task, reflecting that a human life had been taken at every fifth word”. Following the defeat, the Muslim forces had to pull back from the West Gate area, however, they still held control over the West Bridge, a mere half mile northwest. This gave them a great launchpad for night raids and many would be killed trying to scale the walls under the mouths of guns. The White Russian troops emerged as the backbone of the defenses, holding the city walls and making occasional sorties. Urumqi would have fallen if it was not for Sheng Shihtsai who came to her aid with his troops from Turfan. Upon seeing his relief forces the Muslim insurgents broke off their attack and withdrew into the surrounding countryside. With winter coming to an end, with fear of a cholera outbreak looming the Chinese went to work burying the dead. Wu Aichen was one of those who helped with the burials and wrote a horrifying description about the conditions of the city. Over 1000 bodies were buried in a single mass grave within the suburbs and the final death toll was estimated to exceed 6000. Following the relief of Urumqi, the Muslim insurgents seized all they could in the countryside such as Dawan Cheng, the districts of Fukang and parts of Santopao where an estimated 900 Han Chinese were killed. The insurgents burned the stocks of rice that usually fed the capital and on March 1st a detachment of 100 provincial troops were ambushed and annihilated at Chitaowan. The situation throughout the province deteriorated; to the south Ma Shaowu had isolated Kashgar and in the north a Kazakh rebellion broke out in the Sahara Sume region under Sharif Khan. The Kazakh uprising convinced the Soviets that Jin Sujen was going to inevitably lose Xinjiang. They acted without any notice to Nanjing by dispatching forces to help hold up Urumqi. Fate would have it, 2000 battle hardened Chinese troops had recently been driven over the Heilongjiang border into Siberia by the Japanese during the invasion of Manchuria. So Stalin signed off on sending them over the trans-siberian and Turk-sib railways to the Xinjiang frontier of Chuguchak. This force designated the Northeast National Salvation Army consisted of regular soldiers who were well trained and held good morale. They arrived to Urumqi on March 27th of 1933, substantially bolstering the provincial military, more particularly that of the new Provincial commander in chief, Sheng Shihtsai who just so happened to also be a Manchurian. Sheng led the new forces to push back the invading Tungans of Ma Shuming who was forced over the Dawan Cheng back to his HQ at Kara Shahr. The Uyghur insurgents were demoralized and Khoja Niyas Hajji who controlled a belt around the Xinjiang-Gansu frontier began begining for assistance from Ma Chongying. Meanwhile Jin basically was undermined by Sheng and was seeing further unrest in Urumqi. The White Russians who had bore the brunt of the fighting to defend Urumqi were royally pissed off as they had not all been paid and were provided the worst horses and ammunition of all the defenders. Moreover Jin's popularity with all nationalities, even Han Chinese had fallen dramatically because his brother Jin Shuxin had reportedly exorted the granaries during the siege. Following the relief of Urumqi, Pappengut and the other White Russians approached the leaders of the northeast national salvation army with grievances against Jin Shujen and were given assurances of support to mount a coup against him. On April 12th, around 400 White Russians stormed the capital with 200 of them seizing the city gates and yamen. Jin managed to escape over the city walls and fled to the USSR via Chuguchak. From there he returned to China via the Turk-Sib and Trans-Siberian. Meanwhile his younger brother Jin Shuxin was captured and executed. Sheng Shihtsai was encamped at Uruba at the time of the coup and insisted in his future memoirs he had nothing to do with the coup and that it was all the USSR's doing. Regardless after the coup Sheng was urged to go to Urumqi where negotiations began with Liu Wenlung who was appointed Provincial Chairman while Sheng was made Tupan or “border defense commissioner”. Ie; Sheng was made the de facto ruler of Xinjiang. After Ma Shumings failure to take Urumqi and Khoja Niyas Hajji's pleas for help, Ma Chongying determined to reenter the fray in person. Despite the setbacks, the Tungans had crossed the Dawan Cheng and nearly taken the capital, coupled with the seizure of Kashgar, Ma Chongying most likely believed there was still a great chance to take it all. He had spent 18 months rebuilding his army and better yet, because of the USSR's illegal move to save Urumqi, Nanjing officially recognizing his Tungan forces as the 36th division of the NRA. Ma Chongying moved his HQ from Anxi to Suzhou and really improved his military. A German engineer named Vasel working with him described him as a man who admired Napoleon, Bismarck and Hindenburg and who “was frequently to be seen running at the head of his troops during training, even in sub-zero temperature. Military training was pursued with a spartan rigour, pushed to the verge of utter ruthlessness. Desertion was punishable by death, and on one occasion I saw Ma personally behead five such offenders. In one of those sudden fits of exuberance that were typical of him, snatching up casually some hand grenades, which he had made himself, and hurling them, one by one, against the lofty clay-coloured walls of the city. And then he laughed heartily when he saw his men fling themselves flat on the ground as splinters of steel hurtled in all directions. He scorned to seek safety by throwing himself on the ground, and was quite delighted when he saw that I too did not seek cover”. During spring of 1933, Ma Chongying prepared to reinvade Xinjiang. A Swedish man named Bexeill was working along the Gansu-Qinghai border and noted Ma Chongying heavily taxed his territory in northwestern Gansu to the limits of the peasants endurance. He apparently even sent troops into Qinghai to illegally tax them. By May of 1933 his army departed Suhou for Yumen and Vasel gives us this description of them. “A dark mass of human beings, camels and oxen, was pouring out of the city gate towards the west amid clouds of dust. There were hundreds of heavily-laden camels, the bells on their necks clanging monotonously, their drivers easily discernible by their gaudy headgear. In the rear followed high-wheeled ox-carts, flanked on either side by infantry. Behind them again came a company of cavalry, which presently galloped past the lumbering camels and oxen along the track through the desert ... and now I had an opportunity of seeing at close range General Ma's famous cavalry riding past me and keeping its post at the head of the marching columns. This was the famous white cavalry regiment of which General Ma was especially proud. The broad iron swords of the dragoons clanked as they rode along on their magnificent white horses, while on their shoulders they carried carbines of the most varied and antiquated patterns. Next came the brown regiment, while in the rear followed the black regiment, comprising some two thousand horsemen. A short distance behind the cavalry came the infantry - regiment after regiment, headed by the Chinese (Kuomintang) standard. On they swept, platoon after platoon, followed by their officers, with their mausers at the ready. The columns strode along, keeping perfect time with their shrill, high-pitched, mournful, Asiatic marching songs. Sandwiched between some of these trained and trustworthy soldiers I saw large drafts of recruits who had been compelled to join General Ma's forces. These raw levies were constantly kept under very close observation'. On Top of Ma Chongyings new Tungan army, young Uyghurs were also conscripted into his ranks. 2500 Tungans under the command of his younger brother Ma Chongjie captured Kumul in May with little opposition. This was because the area was dominated by Ma Chongyings ally Khoja Niyas Hajji. After this Ma Chongjie issued bilingual proclamations to the people of Kumul, stating they were free of Jin Shujen's tyranny, who at the time was in the USSR. Meanwhile Sheng hurriedly prepared a force of 5000 to meet the invaders near Urumqi. Ma Chongying advanced upon Qiqiaoqing unopposed, getting even further west than his first invasion of 1931. Instead of taking the main road to Turgan, the Tungans crossed the narrow defile between Barkul Tagh and Bogdo Ula to hit the garrison town of Kitai. The first major battle broke out near Mulei, due east of Kitai on May 15th. Two days later a mixed force of 4000 Tungans and Turkic Muslims attacked Kitai led by Ma Chongjie. On May 26th Sheng sortied from Urumqi at the head of 5000 men, 1000 of whom were White Russians. Sheng planned to hold Santai, the halfway point between Urumqi and Kitai. Sheng's men attacked the invaders around Kitai, but lost the battle for the city, though Ma Chongjie was killed in battle. Sheng then retreated back to Urumqi by June 1st. Things looked dire for Sheng, he was unsure how Nanjing would react to the coup against Jin Shujen, his position was threatened to the east by Ma Chongying now headquartered at Kitai and to the west by Chang Peiyuan the military governor of Ili whom he suspected was not loyal to Urumqi and in league with the Tungans. Ma Chongying was now within striking distance of Urumqi, when he suddenly halted his attack and sent a telegram with terms. It turns out Ma Chongying had no idea Jin Shujen had been overthrown, so he was unsure how to proceed. This bought Sheng more time to raise defenses, sending the White Russians to hold Fukang as he dispatched Wu Aichen on a peace mission to Kitai. Wu Aichen's mission failed, so Sheng went to Fukang to take personal command of the army and to meet Ma Chongying around the hamlet of Zuniquan. During the battle of mid June, the provincial forces managed to gain the upper hand due to severe weather conditions for which the lightly clothed Tungans were ill prepared for. The Uyghurs forces of Khoja Niyas Hajji also took no part in the fighting despite being in the immediate area. The Tungans were defeated at Zuniquan, but not routed. Ma Chongyings men managed to retreat in well order to Qiqiaoqing and from there advanced to Turfan joined Tungan forces under Ma Shuming. Combined the Tungans marched to Dawan Cheng. At the same time a Pacification Commissioner, Huang Musung was sent by Nanjing to Urumqi. His mission was to establish peace between the provincial forces and Ma Chongying, both of whom claimed loyalty to Nanjing. Sheng was suspicious of Huang Musung and felt Nanjing might be simply backing the Tungans. Thus Sheng had Huang Musung placed under house arrest. Then Sheng accused three Xinjiang officials of plotting with Huang Musung, Chang Peiyuan and Ma Chongying to overthrow him and had them all executed via a firing squad. Thus Sheng clearly had distanced himself from Nanjing and turned 100% to the USSR for help. During early Autumn Ma Chongying was still in Turfan reorganizing the forces while Sheng was consolidating his position in Urumqi and quelling the Kazakh rebellion. Meanwhile Khoja Niyas Hajji was growing uneasy with his alliance to Ma Chongying and began to open up secret negotiations with Sheng and soon was appointed Chief Defense commissioner for Southern Xinjiang. He then took his Uyghurs across the Dawan Cheng and occupied Toksun only to be surprise attacked and decisively defeated by Tungans under Ma Shuming. By late July Khoja Niyas Hajji took his battered survivors and fled for Kucha. At this point Huang Musung managed to secure his release from house arrest by telegramming Nanjing the recommendation that Sheng Shihtsai and Liu Wenlung be confirmed in their posts as the chief military and civil authorities over Xinjiang. Nanjing had really no options other than to comply. On September 2nd Lo Wenkan, the foreign minister of Nanjing, came to Urumqi and officially confirmed Sheng into office and then mediated between Sheng and Ma Chongying. To compensate Ma Chongying he was offered the post of Garrison Commander of Eastern Xinjiang which he accepted, thus gaining control over Kumul, Barkul and part of Turfan. After Lo Wenkan departed in early October, suddenly Sheng announced the discovery of a new plot against him. He accused Liu Wenlung of conspiring with Ma Chongying, Chang Peiyuan and Lo Wenkan to overthrow him. Liu Wenlung was forced to resign and was replaced as the provincial chairman by Zhu Juixi. Sheng then prepared a final hammer blow against Ma Chongying. However Ma Chongying had secretly been working with Ma Shuming to deliver a lighting stroke against Urumqi which came in December of 1933. Tungan forces passed Dawan Cheng and began attacking the capital. Likewise in response to the constant accusations, Chang Peiyuan finally threw his support to the Tungans. He led his troops across the Talki Pass into Zungharia and attacked the Provincial forces stationed at Wusu. Meanwhile encouraged by the advance of the Gansu Tungans, the indigenous Tungans of Zungharia rose en masse to Ma Chongyings banner. In late december a detachment of the 36th NRA led by Ma Shuming bypassed Urumqi and attacked Chuguchak. Vasel happened to witness this and described the battle as such “The sun's rays, by this time, were shining obliquely across the street and showed us the Tungan army entering the town ... Stirrup to stirrup, the young regular soldiers in their smart uniforms looked a well-disciplined, trim and efficient force. r recognised one of their officers, Ma Shih-ming, the Commander-in-Chief's adjutant, who had frequently been my guest in Soochow. These regular soldiers rode past on beautiful horses, while huge red flags floated in the breeze above their heads, bearing the character 'Ma' in black letters on a white ground. At a short distance followed a horde that was tolerably well equipped . . . I saw needle-guns, blunderbusses and muzzle-loaders ... In their rear dense clouds of dust, which shut out the light, billowed onward, and then came the infantry. . . men with wild eyes and matted hair. . . outlaws who had nothing to lose and everything to gain from the upheaval that was going on. After the infantry followed a huge horde of camels, with their rhythmical swaying gait, laden with produce and goods of every conceivable type ... the breath came from their mouths like smoke - their necks were craned forward, and their heads kept bobbing up and down.”With the Tungans taking Zunghaira, the Khotan Amirs running amok in the south and Chang Peiyuan joining the fray, Sheng's position at Urumqi was hopeless. While Ma Chongying and Sheng Shihtsai continued their struggle in the north, in the south Muhammad Amin Bughra woo'd Khoja Niyas Hajji to become president of a new secessionist Islamic state. Thus was born the Turkic Islamic Republic of Eastern Turkestan ie TIRET. While Khoja Niyas Kajji was the quote president, this was simply symbolic, the real leadership remained with the Amirs. Amir Abdulah retained control over Yarkland, Amir Nur Ahmad Jan over Yangi Hissar and Kashgar and Bughra over Khotan. Shari a law was implemented, a national flag with a white star and crescent over a blue ground was made and the new state sought aid and recognition from Britain. But the TIRET would never receive said recognition or aid, for Britain respected Nanjing's government as the sole authority in Xinjiang. TIRET turned next to Turkey, but found no real help. Then they turned to Afghanistan who likewise could not help them. TIRET was doomed from the very beginning. Meanwhile the battles raged between Sheng and Ma Chongying. Sheng knew Nanjing would not assist him so he turned to the USSR. Sheng dispatched diplomats Chen Teli and Yaoxiong to Moscow pleading for assistance. The Soviets were sympathetic and quite concerned with events such as the rise of TIRET and the possibility of Ma Chongying capturing Urumqi as they suspected him and TIRET to have ties to the Japanese. Weary of Germany and Japan, the USSR took up a policy of curbing any influence from either, especially in her Central Asian frontiers. The Soviets sent this warning to Nanjing “'We do not mind if you Chinese develop [Eastern] Turkestan. But if you permit [Eastern] Turkestan to become a second Manchuria, we must act to protect ourselves. '” Thus in late 1933, following pleas for help from Sheng Shihtsai, the Soviets chose to intervene on behalf of Sheng, whom was known to be a loose cannon and unreliable, but atleast was anti-Japanese. The USSR appointed Apresoff as the new consul-general at Urumqi and upon his arrival Sheng conducted a purge. Officers from the Northeast National Salvation army and White Russian volunteers were arrested and shot, including Pappengut. The White Russians units were reorganized under the command of new Soviet officers. Sheng signed a secret deal with the USSR to allow them to build a railway from Sergiopol, through Chuguchak to Urumqi. Sheng also announced 6 new principles going forward (I) anti-imperialism, (2) kinship to Sovietism, (3) racial or national equality, (4) 'clean' government, (5) peace, and (6) reconstruction. The Soviets were pleased and after receiving approval from Nanjing dispatched two brigades, numbered some 7000 men supported by tanks, artillery and aircraft against the insurgent positions at Kulja and Chuguchak. The Soviets had orders to “clear the roads and liquidate the rebellion”. They rapidly overwhelmed the forces of Chang Peiyuan who committed suicide in shame. The Tungans of Ma Shuming put up a better fight but were dislodged from the Chuguchak area. According to Vasel, the Tungans managed to beat back some attacks during 30 days of battle. In one instance the Tungans foiled a Soviet pincer attack by “crawling through the snow, camouflaged by reversed sheepskins, and storming, from a very short distance, Soviet machine-gun posts whilst wielding the characteristic curved sword of Islam”. The main battle broke out on the frost-bound banks of the Tutun River, 30 miles northwest of Urumqi. According to The Times correspondent Peter Fleming , “the Battle of the Tutun River 'raged for several days; but the Tungans' unskilled ferocity was no match for a mechanised foe, and the troops ... were badly demoralised by gas bombs dropped by the Soviet airmen”. Both the Soviets and Tungans took heavy casualties, but ultimately the Soviets won, forcing Ma Chongying to retreat from Urumqi to the Dawan Cheng, pursued by a mixed force of Soviets, White Russians and Chinese. The Tungans attempted to make a stand at Dawan Cheng, but according to Vasel “a detachment of Soviet troops supported by armoured cars was attacked by a force of some 500 Tungans. After savage hand-to-hand fighting the Soviet forces were driven back, and their armoured cars were rolled off the mountainside by the victorious Tungans. At this juncture, by a strange twist of fate, the surviving Soviet troops were relieved by a force of White Russian 'volunteers', and Ma Chung-ying was forced to continue his retreat through Toksun to Korla”. Meanwhile in Southern Xinjiang, the Soviets tried to break the TIRET. A Soviet backed force of irregulars known as the “Tortunjis” was set up at Ulug Chat, led by Yusuf Jan. The Soviets also negotiated secretly with Khoja Niyas Hajji who despite being the president of the TIRET had taken all of his forces to Aksu. As a result Khoja Niyas Hajji received Soviet arms in return for turning against his anti-soviet colleagues. Yet despite Soviet support, Khoja Niyas Hajji's Uyghur forces were decisively defeated by 800 Tungans under Ma Chongying. Khoja Niyas Hajji had to abandon his HQ at Aksu fleeing for Kashgar with 1500 men on January 13th of 1934. The Tungans soon besieged Kashgar New City forcing Khoja Niyas Hajji and local forces under Sabit Damullah to withdrew towards Yangi-Hissar, then held by Nur Ahmad Jan. Within 24 hours the Tungan advance guard led by Ma Fuyuan entered Kashgar meeting little resistance. According to British Consulate General Thomson-Glover “'some 800 Tungans and 1,200 conscripts caused nearly 10,000 rebel troops to flee from Kashgar'” To make thing more complicated at this time Ma Shaowu assumed senior military and civil control on behalf of Nanjing and at the request of Ma Chanzeng and Ma Fuyuan. Thus the capital of TIRET was recaptured for Nanjing, but not by their approved forces under Sheng, but of those under Ma Chongying. Following the fall of Kashgar, TIRET moved its administration to Yangi-Hissar. Meanwhile Khoja Niyas Hajji fled to Irkeshtam on the Soviet border and there signed a treaty with the USSR to dissolve the TIRET and relinquished his forces to be used by the Xinjiang provincial authorities against the Tungans and Khotan Amirs. For this he was rewarded Civil Governor for life over Xinjiang with Sheng Shihtsai retaining military governorship. On February 14th, the Khotanlik forces tried but failed to recapture Kashgar. In response for two days the Tungans systematically looted Kashgar old city while they massacred nearly 2000 of its citizenry. Then Ma Chanzeng and Ma Fuyuan advanced to Yangi-Hissar where on March 28th looted its old city and killed everyone they got their hands on. In the face of the Tungan onslaught, Amir Nur Ahmad Jan fled into Yangi Hissar New City and Sabit Damullah fled for Yarkland. Nur Ahmad Jan led a fierce resistance at the New City until April 2nd when Amir Abdullah arrived from Yarkland with several thousand troops. However caught out in the open, Abdullah's men were obliterated by the Tungans and Abdullah was cut down and his severed head was sent to Kashgar to be exhibited outside the Id-gah Mosque. Yangi-Hissar New City continued to resist, “wielding only rifles and conserving their scanty ammunition and rolling back the attackers scaling the walls by means of large stones and tree trunks”. The Tungans took New City on April 12th, putting 500 of its defenders and Nur Ahmad Jan to the sword. Meanwhile the administration of TIRET received word of Khoja Niyas Hajji's deal with the Soviets and refused to dissolve. Thus Khoja Niyas Hajji went to Yarkland to try and convince Amir Muhammad Amin Bughra to dissolve the TIRET. He arrived there in Mid April, only a few days before the Tungas would. Bughra fled towards Khotan as Khoja Niyas Hajji looted Yarkland taking Sabit Damullah prisoner and advanced to Aksu. The Tungans arrived at Yarkland on the 20th and immediately pursued Khoja Niyas Hajji. Khoja Niyas Hajji managed to get to Aksu where he handed over Sabit Damullah who was promptly hung. Meanwhile Ma Chongying arrived at Kashgar with 10,000 men on April 6th where he denounced Sheng Shihtsai as a Soviet Puppet and stressed loyalty to Nanjing to its population. Other Tungan forces captured Sarikol and together marched upon Khotan. Khotan was taken on June 12th without a fight and unlike at Kashgar and Yangi-Hissar, the Tungans did not loot, but instead hunted down Muhammad Amin Bughra who had escaped with 3000 troops towards Keriya. Bughra managed to give them all the slip and fled with several ponies carrying hold to Ladakh in British India where he received permission to travel to Srinagar. Thus ended the TIRET experiment as Ma Chongying claimed he had recaptured southern Xinjiang for Nanjing. Ma Chongying then met with Thomson Glover “that he had come to Kashgar 'to try and save south Sinkiang from Russian influence', and continued to stress his loyalty to Nanjing”. Meanwhile Ma Chongying set up a defensive line at Maral Bashi and Fayzabad with his brother in law, Ma Hushan in command. During May and June of 1934 Ma Chongying tried to gain sympathy from the British for his cause, but they refused to get involved. In a surprising turn of events, as told to us by Thomson Glover “Ma Chung-ying left Kashgar for Irkeshtam early on 7th July with three or four of his officers. . . and an escort of some 50 Tungans and one or more members of the USSR Consulate or Trade Agency. Arrived near the border to Russia the escort were met by Russian or Russian-employed troops. The Tungan escort dispersed or handed over their arms to some of Khoja Niyas' levies, and Ma Chung-ying disappeared into Russia”. Why the courageous Tungan threw in the towel is a mystery. He had not yet been deceive beaten, he could have taken his Tungan force and held out for 3 years before returning back to Gansu. Regardless the Soviets had offered him sanctuary and he just took it. His fate is a complete mystery, some say he was killed by the Soviets, some say he rotted in a dungeon, that he lived a life of luxury as a Soviet guest, and one claim is that in 1938, when Sheng Shihtsai visited Moscow, Stalin had him executed as a gift. Ma Chongyings command passed to Ma Hushan who set up a HQ at Khotan and carved out a sphere of influence extending from Karghalik to CHarkhlik. The provincial forces did nothing to stop him, and instead signed a truce, ending the wars with the Tungans. Sheng Shihtsai had won, he now held absolute power over Xinjiang, though as we will see much later on, Xinjiang was certainly not done seeing battles. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. Thus in the end, after all of these different groups of people formed uprisings, betrayed one another and fought this large game of thrones for Xinjiang, it was Sheng Shihtsai who prevailed above all. Xinjiang was by no means stable and would continue to see chaos well into WW2 however.
Silver47 Exploration Corp CEO Gary Thompson joined Steve Darling from Proactive to announce promising results from its 2024 drill program at the flagship Red Mountain Project in Alaska. CEO Gary Thompson joined Proactive to discuss findings from the first of six holes drilled this year, emphasizing the potential for high-grade infill drilling in the Dry Creek resource area. A total of 1,039 metres of drilling was completed across the Dry Creek, West Tundra Flats, and Kiwi prospects. Notably, drilling at Dry Creek uncovered several massive sulphide horizons within a 24.5-metre semi-massive mineralized section, yielding the highest gold grade interval ever recorded at the project. The mineralization remains open, signaling potential for further resource expansion. The Dry Creek Zone mineralization features multiple horizons of semi-massive to massive sulfides within the Totatlanika Schist, a geological formation known for hosting volcanogenic massive sulfide (VMS) deposits. These mineralized horizons, which include the Fosters and Discovery lenses, span a central 1,400 metres of the Dry Creek North Horizon and are rich in silver, zinc, lead, gold, and copper sulfides. Drilling also revealed geological features such as growth faults near the Fosters lens, suggesting proximity to a VMS feeder zone—a potential source of significant mineralization. With true width intersections reaching up to 40 metres, the findings underscore the project's high-grade potential and its capacity for long-term development. Silver47 continues to advance exploration at Red Mountain, focusing on defining and expanding its resource base while targeting deeper mineralized zones. #proactiveinvestors #silver47explorstioncorp #tsxv #aga #SilverAndGold #AlaskaExploration #RedMountain #PolymetallicMining #ResourceDevelopment #ProactiveInvestors #GaryThompson #invest #investing #investment #investor #stockmarket #stocks #stock #stockmarketnews
A Creepy WednesdayFirst a look at this day in History.Then Casey Crime Photographer starring Staats Cotsworth, originally broadcast November 20, 1947, 77 years ago, Earned Rewards. Shorty Irwin, one of Casey's rival photographers, tries for a $5000 reward. He exposes a murderer and develops death!Followed by Jeff Regan Investigator starring Jack Webb, originally broadcast November 20, 1948, 76 years ago, The Pilgrim's Progress. At a Thanksgiving turkey shoot, Regan gets the bird and it's not the turkey that gets shot, it's Miles Standish!Then Suspense, originally broadcast November 20, 1960, 64 years ago, Night on Red Mountain starring Lawson Zerbe. A gas station owner atop a California mountain is threatened by members of his old gang during a blizzard. Followed by Macabre, originally broadcast November 20, 1961, 63 years ago, Weekend. A weekend on a mysterious island with a mad doctor who is experimenting with a deadly drug. Finally Lum and Abner, originally broadcast November 20, 1941, 83 years ago. Lum and the library lion - a real one, not a statue. Thanks to Sean for supporting our podcast by using the Buy Me a Coffee function at http://classicradio.streamFind the Family Fallout Shelter Booklet Here:https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/the_family_fallout_shelter_1959.pdfhttps://wardomatic.blogspot.com/2006/11/fallout-shelter-handbook-1962.htmlAnd more about the Survive-all Fallout Sheltershttps://conelrad.blogspot.com/2010/09/mad-men-meet-mad-survive-all-shelter.html
"FORGOTTEN LEADING LADIES FROM THE GOLDEN AGE OF HOLLYWOOD" - 11/18/2024 A friend of mine once said that in Hollywood the toilet flushes every seven years. Meaning after about seven years, no one remembers who you are. Whether that's true or not, there are many classic film stars who were once popular, who have faded away into obscurity. We covered men a few months go, and now we are giving the ladies their due. Join us as we talk about four fabulous actresses who deserve to be remembered — LIZABETH SCOTT, MARIE WINDSOR, ELLA RAINES, and GERALDINE FITZGERALD. SHOW NOTES: Sources: “Biography of Lizabeth Scott,” August 1951, Paramount Pictures; “Liz Scott Slaps Libel Suit on Confidential Mag,” July 26, 1955, Variety; “Cut Actress Lizabeth Scott Out of Texan's Will,” May 12, 1971, Variety; "Geraldine's Long Journey,” June 13, 1971, New York Times; “Lizabeth Scott,” November 1971, by Don Stanke, Film Fan Magazine; Merv Griffin Interview with Geraldine Fitzgerald, 1977; Arlene Francis Interview with Geraldine Fitzgerald, 1985; Katie Kelly Interview with Geraldine Fitzgerald, 1985; “The Alluring Lizabeth Scott,” February 1993, by David M. Goodspeed, American Movie Classic magazine; “In Search of Lisabeth Scott: The Sphinx from Scranton,” Summer 2002, by Max Pierce, Films of the Golden Ages; “Marie Windsor A Shining Light,” piute.org; “Marie Windsor Tales of Noir and B Movies,” October 31. 1997, by Jerry Renshaw, The Austin Chronicle; “Marie Windsor, Femme Fatale And Queen of the B's, Dies at 80,” Dec. 14, 2000, New York Times; “Geraldine Fitzgerald, 91, Star of Stage and Film, Dies,” July 19, 2005, New York Times; “Lizabeth Scott: Sultry Woman of Film Noir (Obit),” February 8, 2015, Los Angeles Times; “A Light In the Dark: Ella Raines and Film Noirs Working Girls,” Fall 2015, by Imogen Sara Smith, Noir City magazine; “A Centenary Celebration of Ella Raines: Radiant Film Stars Daughter Reflects on Her Mother's Career,” August 6, 2020, by Leticia Magalhães, Cine Suffragette; TCM.com; IMDBPro.com; Movies Mentioned: LIZABETH SCOTT: You Came Along (1945); The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946); Dead Reckoning (1946); Desert Fury (1947); I Walk Alone (1947); Pitfall (1948); Too Late for Tears (1949); Paid In Full (1950); Dark City (1950); The Company She Keeps (1951); Red Mountain (1951); The Racket (1951); Stolen Face (1952); Bad For Each Other (1953); Scared Stiff (1953); Loving You (1957) Pulp (1972); MARIE WINDSOR: Unexpected Uncle (1941); Weekend For Three (1941); All American Co-ed (1941); The Hucksters (1947); Song of the Thin Man (1947); Three Musketeers (1948); The Kissing Bandit (1948); Force of Evil (1948); Outpost in Morocco (1949); Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend (1949); Hellfire (1949); The Fighting Kentuckian (1949); Dakota Lil (1950); Little Big Horn (1951); The Narrow Margin (1952); Cat Women of the Moon (1953); Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955); The Killing (1956); ELLA RAINES: Corvette K-225 (1943); Cry Havoc (1943); The Phantom Lady (1944); Hail The Conquering Hero (1944); Tall In The Saddle (1944); The Suspect (1944); The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945); White Tie and Tails (1945) Brute Force (1947); The Senator Was Indiscreet (1947); The Walking Hills (1949); Impact (1949); The Man In The Road (1956); GERALDINE FITZGERALD: Blind Justice (1934); Dark Victory (1939); Wuthering Heights (1939); The Gay Sisters (1942); Watch on the Rhine (1943); Wilson (1944); Nobody Lives Forever (1946); Three Strangers (1946); Ten North Frederick (1958); The Pawnbroker (1964); Rachel, Rachel (1968); Harry and Tonto (1974); Arthur (1981); Do You Remember Love (1985); Arthur 2: On The Rocks (1988); --------------------------------- http://www.airwavemedia.com Please contact sales@advertisecast.com if you would like to advertise on our podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Zenith Minerals (ASX:ZNC) managing director Andrew Smith talked with Proactive's Tylah Tully about the company's ongoing efforts to expand its gold resources and outline its unique investor appeal. The company is focused on advancing its flagship projects, including Dulcie Far North in Western Australia and Red Mountain in Queensland. According to Smith, these projects hold significant growth potential, especially as the company aims to achieve a 600,000–700,000-ounce target from Dulcie Far North through organic growth, new drilling and potential asset acquisitions. Smith highlighted the recent drilling efforts, including a 17-hole program aimed at expanding and confirming the inferred resources at Dolce Far North. While final data from the program is still pending, early results appear promising. He encouraged stakeholders to "watch this space for an announcement soon”. Moving forward, Zenith is continuing work on the Red Mountain project, which has already shown significant potential and could evolve into a larger-scale operation. This year, the company plans a 20-hole drilling program there, aiming to explore the system's potential despite the associated risk. In discussing Zenith's investor case, Smith emphasised the company's low current valuation, which he views as an attractive entry point for potential investors. "We have a big pipeline of exploration work ahead of us," he stated, adding that Zenith's portfolio covers both early-stage gold exploration and longer-term interests in lithium. #ProactiveInvestors #ZenithMinerals #ASX #GoldExploration #DolceFarNorth #RedMountainProject #MiningInvesting #AndrewSmith #ProactiveInvestors #GoldResources #LithiumProjects #InvestorUpdates
This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Oct. 11. It dropped for free subscribers on Oct. 18. To receive future episodes as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoAndy Cohen, General Manager of Fernie Alpine Resort, British ColumbiaRecorded onSeptember 3, 2024About FernieClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Resorts of the Canadian Rockies, which also owns:Located in: Fernie, British ColumbiaPass affiliations:* Epic Pass: 7 days, shared with Kicking Horse, Kimberley, Nakiska, Stoneham, and Mont-Sainte Anne* RCR Rockies Season Pass: unlimited access, along with Kicking Horse, Kimberley, and NakiskaClosest neighboring ski areas: Fairmont Hot Springs (1:15), Kimberley (1:27), Panorama (1:45) – travel times vary considerably given time of year and weather conditionsBase elevation: 3,450 feet/1,052 metersSummit elevation: 7,000 feet/2,134 metersVertical drop: 3,550 feet/1,082 metersSkiable Acres: 2,500+Average annual snowfall: 360 inches/914 Canadian inches (also called centimeters)Trail count: 145 named runs plus five alpine bowls and tree skiing (4% extreme, 21% expert, 32% advanced, 30% intermediate, 13% novice)Lift count: 10 (2 high-speed quads, 2 fixed-grip quads, 3 triples, 1 T-bar, 1 Poma, 1 conveyor - view Lift Blog's inventory of Fernie's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himOne of the most irritating dwellers of the #SkiInternet is Shoosh Emoji Bro. This Digital Daniel Boone, having boldly piloted his Subaru beyond the civilized bounds of Interstate 70, considers all outlying mountains to be his personal domain. So empowered, he patrols the digital sphere, dropping shoosh emojis on any poster that dares to mention Lost Trail or White Pass or Baker or Wolf Creek. Like an overzealous pamphleteer, he slings his brand haphazardly, toward any mountain kingdom he deems worthy of his forcefield. Shoosh Emoji Bro once Shoosh Emoji-ed me over a post about Alta.
JJ Williams is the third-generation of his family in the wine business out of Red Mountain – one of the world’s premier viticultural areas outside of Richland, WA. But before the wine business, his family first put down roots in the Mid-Columbia region to work at Hanford. During the Manhattan Project, Williams’s great grandfather worked at the site, and then his grandfather worked on what’s called the Fast Flux Test Facility. It’s September now and crush is on – meaning that all the grapes are coming in to be pressed and fermented into wine. Williams recently got the distinction of being named in Wine Enthusiast’s 40 under 40. We sit down with him in our remote studio on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities.
This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Sept. 11. It dropped for free subscribers on Sept. 19. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoMatt Davies, General Manager of Cypress Mountain, British ColumbiaRecorded onAugust 5, 2024About Cypress MountainClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Boyne ResortsLocated in: West Vancouver, British ColumbiaYear founded: 1970Pass affiliations:* Ikon Pass: 7 days, no blackouts* Ikon Base Pass: 5 days, holiday blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: Grouse Mountain (:28), Mt. Seymour (:55) – travel times vary considerably given weather, time of day, and time of yearBase elevation: 2,704 feet/824 meters (base of Raven Ridge quad)Summit elevation: 4,720 feet/1,440 meters (summit of Mt. Strachan)Vertical drop: 2,016 feet/614 meters total | 1,236 feet/377 meters on Black Mountain | 1,720 feet/524 meters on Mt. StrachanSkiable Acres: 600 acresAverage annual snowfall: 245 inches/622 cmTrail count: 53 (13% beginner, 43% intermediate, 44% difficult)Lift count: 7 (2 high-speed quads, 3 fixed-grip quads, 1 double, 1 carpet – view Lift Blog's inventory of Cypress' lift fleet)View historic Cypress Mountain trailmaps on skimap.org.Why I interviewed himI'm stubbornly obsessed with ski areas that are in places that seem impractical or improbable: above Los Angeles, in Indiana, in a New Jersey mall. Cypress doesn't really fit into this category, but it also sort of does. It makes perfect sense that a ski area would sit north of the 49th Parallel, scraping the same snow train that annually buries the mountains from Mt. Bachelor all the way to Whistler. It seems less likely that a 2,000-vertical-foot ski area would rise just minutes outside of Canada's third-largest city, one known for its moderate climate. But Cypress is exactly that, and offers – along with its neighbors Grouse Mountain and Mt. Seymour – a bite of winter anytime cityfolk want to open the refrigerator door.There's all kinds of weird stuff going on here, actually. Why is this little locals' bump – a good ski area, and a beautiful one, but no one's destination – decorated like a four-star general of skiing? 2010 Winter Olympics host mountain. Gilded member of Alterra's Ikon Pass. A piece of Boyne's continent-wide jigsaw puzzle. It's like you show up at your buddy's one-room hunting cabin and he's like yeah actually I built like a Batcave/wave pool/personal zoo with rideable zebras underneath. And you're like dang Baller who knew?What we talked aboutOffseason projects; snowmaking evolution since Boyne's 2001 acquisition; challenges of getting to 100 percent snowmaking; useful parking lot snow; how a challenging winter became “a pretty incredible experience for the whole team”; last winter: el nino or climate change?; why working for Whistler was so much fun; what happened when Vail Resorts bought Whistler – “I don't think there was a full understanding of the cultural differences between Canadians and Americans”; the differences between Cypress and Whistler; working for Vail versus working for Boyne – “the mantra at Boyne Resorts is that ‘we're a company of ski resorts, not a ski resort company'”; the enormous and potentially enormously transformative Cypress Village development; connecting village to ski area via aerial lift; future lift upgrades, including potential six-packs; potential night-skiing expansion; paid parking incoming; the Ikon Pass; the 76-day pass guarantee; and Cypress' Olympic legacy.Why now was a good time for this interviewMountain town housing is most often framed as an intractable problem, ingrown and malignant and impossible to reset or rethink or repair. Too hard to do. But it is not hard to do. It is the easiest thing in the world. To provide more housing, municipalities must allow developers to build more housing, and make them do it in a way that is dense and walkable, that is mixed with commerce, that gives people as many ways to move around without a car as possible.This is not some new or brilliant idea. This is simply how humans built villages for about 10,000 years, until the advent of the automobile. Then we started building our spaces for machines instead of for people. This was a mistake, and is the root problem of every mountain town housing crisis in North America. That and the fact that U.S. Americans make no distinction between the hyper-thoughtful new urbanist impulses described here and the sprawling shitpile of random buildings that are largely the backdrop of our national life. The very thing that would inject humanity into the mountains is recast as a corrupting force that would destroy a community's already-compromised-by-bad-design character.Not that it will matter to our impossible American brains, but Canada is about to show us how to do this. Over the next 25 years, a pocket of raw forest hard against Cypress' access road will sprout a city of 3,711 homes that will house thousands of people. It will be a human-scaled, pedestrian-first community, a city neighborhood dropped onto a mountainside. A gondola could connect the complex to Cypress' lifts thousands of feet up the mountain – more cars off the road. It would look like this (the potential aerial lift is not depicted here):Here's how the whole thing would set up against the mountain:And here's what it would be like at ground level:Like wow that actually resembles something that is not toxic to the human soul. But to a certain sort of Mother Earth evangelist, the mere suggestion of any sort of mountainside development is blasphemous. I understand this impulse, but I believe that it is misdirected, a too-late reflex against the subdivision-off-an-exit-ramp Build- A-Bungalow mentality that transformed this country into a car-first sprawlscape. I believe a reset is in order: to preserve large tracts of wilderness, we should intensely develop small pieces of land, and leave the rest alone. This is about to happen near Cypress. We should pay attention.More on Cypress Village:* West Vancouver Approves ‘Transformational' Plan for Cypress Village Development - North Shore News* West Vancouver Approves Cypress Village Development with Homes for Nearly 7,000 People - UrbanizedWhat I got wrong* I said that Cypress had installed the Easy Rider quad in 2021, rather than 2001 (the correct year).* I also said that certain no-ski zones on Vail Mountain's trailmap were labelled as “lynx habitat.” They are actually labelled as “wildlife habitat.” My confusion stemmed from the resort's historical friction with the pro-Lynxers.Why you should ski Cypress MountainYou'll see it anyway on your way north to Whistler: the turnoff to Cypress Bowl Road. Four switchbacks and you're there, to a cut in the mountains surrounded by chairlifts, neon-green Olympic rings standing against the pines.This is not Whistler and no one will try to tell you that it is, including the guy running the place, who put in two decades priming the machine just up the road. But Cypress is not just a waystation either, or a curiosity, or a Wednesday evening punchcard for Vancouver Cubicle Bro. Two thousand vertical feet is a lot of vertical feet. It often snows here by the Dumpster load. Off the summits, spectacular views, panoramic, sweeping, a jigsaw interlocking of the manmade and natural worlds. The terrain is varied, playful, plentiful. And when the snow settles and the trees fill in, a bit of an Incredible Hulk effect kicks on, as this mild-mannered Bruce Banner of a ski area flexes into something bigger and beefier, an unlikely superhero of the Vancouver heights.But Cypress is also not a typical Ikon Pass resort: 600 acres, six chairlifts, not a single condo tucked against the hill. It's a ski area that's just a ski area. It rains a lot. A busy-day hike up from the most distant parking lot can eat an irrevocable part of your soul (new shuttles this year should help that). Snowmaking, by Boyne standards, is limited, (though punchy for B.C.). The lift fleet, also by Boyne standards, feels merely adequate, rather than the am-I-in-Austria-or-Montana explosive awe that hits you at the base of Big Sky. To describe a ski area as both spectacular and ordinary feels like a contradiction (or, worse, lazy on my part). But Cypress is in fact both of these things. Lodged in a national park, yet part of Vancouver's urban fabric. Brown-dirt trails in February and dang-where'd-I-leave-my-giraffe deep 10 days later. Just another urban ski area, but latched onto a pass with Aspen and Alta, a piece of a company that includes Big Sky and Big Cottonwood and a pair of New England ski areas that dwarf their Brother Cypress. A stop on the way north to Whistler, but much more than that as well.Podcast NotesOn the 2010 Winter OlympicsA summary of Cypress' Olympic timeline, from the mountain's history page:On Whistler BlackcombWe talk quite a bit about Whistler, where Davies worked for two decades. Here's a trailmap so you don't have to go look it up:On animosity between the merger of Whistler and BlackcombI covered this when I hosted Whistler COO Belinda Trembath on the podcast a few months back.On neighborsCypress is one of three ski areas seated just north of Vancouver. The other two are Grouse Mountain and Mt. Seymour, which we allude to briefly in the podcast. Here are some visuals:On Boyne's building bingeI won't itemize everything here, but over the past half decade or so, Boyne has leapt ahead of everyone else in North American in adoption of hyper-modern lift technology. The company operates all five eight-place chairlift in the United States, has built four advanced six-packs, just built a rocketship-speedy tram at Big Sky, has rebuilt and repurposed four high-speed quads within its portfolio, and has upgraded a bucketload of aging fixed-grip chairs. And many more lifts, including two super-advanced gondolas coming to Big Sky, are on their way.On Sunday River's progression carpetsThis is how carpets ought to be stacked – as a staircase from easiest to hardest, letting beginners work up their confidence with short bursts of motion:On side-by-side carpetsBoyne has two of these bad boys, as far as I know – one at Big Sky, and one at Summit at Snoqualmie, both installed last year. Here's the Big Sky lift:On Ikon resorts in B.C. and proximity to CypressWhile British Columbia is well-stocked with Ikon Pass partners – Revelstoke, Red Mountain, Panorama, Sun Peaks – none of them is anywhere near Cypress. The closest, Sun Peaks, is four to five hours under the best conditions. The next closest Ikon Pass partner is The Summit at Snoqualmie, four hours and an international border south – so more than twice the distance as that little place north of Cypress called Whistler. The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 56/100 in 2024, and number 556 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.stormskiing.com/subscribe
Join us and Student Council members Cole Bagnasco and Kacie Roberts as we discuss student council and the upcoming Red Mountain 2024 Homecoming, titled "There's No Place Like Homecoming"! Hosted by: Brooklyn Anaya Starring: Cole Bagnasco, Kacie Roberts
Breaking - Red Mountain Radio is here with RMTV executive producer Imara Acosta, and varsity badminton athletes Brynlee Griffiths and Amelia Garner. Now this: New groundbreaking behind the scenes insight on varsity badminton and a stunning interview with Red Mountain's only student executive producer! Hosted by: Brooklyn Anaya Starring: Amelia Garner, Brynlee Griffiths, and Imara Acosta
With the beginning of the fall sports season now underway, we invited some of Red Mountain's top varsity athletes from beach volleyball and flag football! Join us as we get the hot goss and juicy deets from Liz Gonzalez, Sophie Incardone, Luca Erickson, and Matthew Pastorin! Hosted by: Brooklyn Anaya Starring: Liz Gonzalez, Sophie Incardone, Luca Erickson, and Matthew Pastorin
Here at Red Mountain, we're starting the fall sports season strong with a deep-dive into Football and Cross Country with our varsity athletes, Bode Wagner, Jacob Redwing, and Crew Comish! Get unique insights on rivalries, off-season training, and more! Follow us on Instagram @redmtnradio for behind the scenes fun and episode updates! Hosted by: Brooklyn Anaya Starring: Crew Comish, Jacob Redwing, and Bode Wagner
Share This Video: https://youtu.be/kQDNVARxOsY DOLLY VARDEN SILVER: TSX.V: DV | OTCQX: DOLLF WEBSITE: https://dollyvardensilver.com/ I'm Maurice Jackson, the founder of Proven and Probable. We specialize in identifying under valued stocks that have a massive potential upside. Today we are highlighting what we believe to be the best silver proposition for your portfolio nestled in the bottom of the Golden Triangle located in British Columbia, which has seen over $5B in M&A since 2018! We have been buyers of this stock 4 years and counting. Dolly Varden Silver has begin the first in a series of press release announcing the results from their 2024 Drill Program of 25,000 Meters. Find out why Eric Sprott, Rick Rule, Hecla Mining, Fury Gold Mines, Fidelity Investments, Sprott, Sprott USA, Delbrook, and High-Net-Worth investors, with a 7% float! Watch now! Dolly Varden Silver Corporation is a mineral exploration company focused on advancing its 100% held Kitsault Valley Project located in the Golden Triangle of British Columbia, Canada, 25kms by road to deep tide water. The 163 sq. km. project hosts the high-grade silver and gold resources of Dolly Varden and Homestake Ridge along with the past producing Dolly Varden and Torbrit silver mines. It is considered to be prospective for hosting further precious metal deposits, being on the same structural and stratigraphic belts that host numerous other, on-trend, high-grade deposits, such as Eskay Creek and Brucejack. The project also contains the Big Bulk property which is prospective for porphyry and skarn style copper and gold mineralization, similar to other such deposits in the region (Red Mountain, KSM, Red Chris). The Company's common shares are listed and traded on the TSX.V under the symbol DV and on the OTCQX system under the symbol DOLLF. WEBSITE: https://provenandprobable.com/
DOLLY VARDEN SILVER: TSX.V: DV | OTCQX: DOLLF WEBSITE: https://dollyvardensilver.com/ I'm Maurice Jackson, the founder of Proven and Probable. We specialize in identifying under valued stocks that have a massive potential upside. Today we are highlighting what we believe to be the best silver proposition for your portfolio nestled in the bottom of the Golden Triangle located in British Columbia, which has seen over $5B in M&A since 2018! We have been buyers of this stock 4 years and counting. The company has just started their 2024 Drill Program of 25,000 Meters. Find out why Eric Sprott, Rick Rule, Hecla Mining, Fury Gold Mines, Fidelity Investments, Sprott, Sprott USA, Delbrook, and High-Net-Worth investors, with a 7% float! Watch now! Dolly Varden Silver Corporation is a mineral exploration company focused on advancing its 100% held Kitsault Valley Project located in the Golden Triangle of British Columbia, Canada, 25kms by road to deep tide water. The 163 sq. km. project hosts the high-grade silver and gold resources of Dolly Varden and Homestake Ridge along with the past producing Dolly Varden and Torbrit silver mines. It is considered to be prospective for hosting further precious metal deposits, being on the same structural and stratigraphic belts that host numerous other, on-trend, high-grade deposits, such as Eskay Creek and Brucejack. The project also contains the Big Bulk property which is prospective for porphyry and skarn style copper and gold mineralization, similar to other such deposits in the region (Red Mountain, KSM, Red Chris). The Company's common shares are listed and traded on the TSX.V under the symbol DV and on the OTCQX system under the symbol DOLLF. WEBSITE: https://provenandprobable.com/
This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on June 10. It dropped for free subscribers on June 17. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoBelinda Trembath, Vice President & Chief Operating Officer of Whistler Blackcomb, British ColumbiaRecorded onJune 3, 2024About Whistler BlackcombClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Vail Resorts (majority owners; Nippon Cable owns a 25 percent stake in Whistler Blackcomb)Located in: Whistler, British ColumbiaYear founded: 1966Pass affiliations:* Epic Pass: unlimited* Epic Local Pass: 10 holiday-restricted days, shared with Vail Mountain and Beaver CreekClosest neighboring ski areas: Grouse Mountain (1:26), Cypress (1:30), Mt. Seymour (1:50) – travel times vary based upon weather conditions, time of day, and time of yearBase elevation: 2,214 feet (675 meters)Summit elevation: 7,497 feet (2,284 meters)Vertical drop: 5,283 feet (1,609 meters)Skiable Acres: 8,171Average annual snowfall: 408 inches (1,036 centimeters)Trail count: 276 (20% easiest, 50% more difficult, 30% most difficult)Lift count: A lot (1 28-passenger gondola, 3 10-passenger gondolas, 1 8-passenger gondola, 1 8-passenger pulse gondola, 8 high-speed quads, 4 six-packs, 1 eight-pack, 3 triples, 2 T-bars, 7 carpets – view Lift Blog's inventory of Whistler Blackcomb's lift fleet) – inventory includes upgrade of Jersey Cream Express from a quad to a six-pack for the 2024-25 ski season.Why I interviewed herHistorical records claim that when Lewis and Clark voyaged west in 1804, they were seeking “the most direct and practicable water communication across this continent, for the purposes of commerce.” But they were actually looking for Whistler Blackcomb.Or at least I think they were. What other reason is there to go west but to seek out these fabulous mountains, rising side by side and a mile* into the sky, where Pacific blow-off splinters into summit blizzards and packed humanity animates the village below?There is nothing else like Whistler in North America. It is our most complete, and our greatest, ski resort. Where else does one encounter this collision of terrain, vertical, panorama, variety, and walkable life, interconnected with audacious aerial lifts and charged by a pilgrim-like massing of skiers from every piece and part of the world? Europe and nowhere else. Except for here.Other North American ski resorts offer some of these things, and some of them offer better versions of them than Whistler. But none of them has all of them, and those that have versions of each fail to combine them all so fluidly. There is no better snow than Alta-Snowbird snow, but there is no substantive walkable village. There is no better lift than Jackson's tram, but the inbounds terrain lacks scale and the town is miles away. There is no better energy than Palisades Tahoe energy, but the Pony Express is still carrying news of its existence out of California.Once you've skied Whistler – or, more precisely, absorbed it and been absorbed by it – every other ski area becomes Not Whistler. The place lingers. You carry it around. Place it into every ski conversation. “Have you been to Whistler?” If not, you try to describe it. But it can't be done. “Just go,” you say, and that's as close as most of us can come to grabbing the raw power of the place.*Or 1.6 Canadian Miles (sometimes referred to as “kilometers”).What we talked aboutWhy skier visits dropped at Whistler-Blackcomb this past winter; the new Fitzsimmons eight-passenger express and what it took to modify a lift that had originally been intended for Park City; why skiers can often walk onto that lift with little to no wait; this summer's Jersey Cream lift upgrade; why Jersey Cream didn't require as many modifications as Fitzsimmons even though it was also meant for Park City; the complexity of installing a mid-mountain lift; why WB had to cancel 2024 summer skiing and what that means for future summer seasons; could we see a gondola serving the glacier instead?; Vail's Australian trio of Mt. Hotham, Perisher, and Falls Creek; Whistler's wild weather; the distinct identities of Blackcomb and Whistler; what WB means to Vail Resorts; WB's Olympic legacy; Whistler's surprisingly low base elevation and what that means for the visitor; WB's relationship with local First Nations; priorities for future lift upgrades and potential changes to the Whistler gondola, Seventh Heaven, Whistler T-bar, Franz's, Garbanzo; discussing proposed additional lifts in Symphony Bowl and elsewhere on Whistler; potential expansion into a fourth portal; potential new or upgraded lifts sketched out in Blackcomb Mountain's masterplan; why WB de-commissioned the Hortsman T-Bar; missing the Wizard-to-Solar-Coaster access that the Blackcomb Gondola replaced; WB's amazing self-managing lift mazes; My Epic App direct-to-lift access is coming to Whistler; employee housing; why Whistler's season pass costs more than an Epic Pass; and Edge cards. Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewFour new major lifts in three years; the cancellation of summer skiing; “materially lower” skier visits at Whistler this past winter, as reported by Vail Resorts – all good topics, all enough to justify a check-in. Oh and the fact that Whistler Blackcomb is the largest ski area in the Western Hemisphere, the crown jewel in Vail's sprawling portfolio, the single most important ski area on the continent.And why is that? What makes this place so special? The answer lies only partly in its bigness. Whistler is vast. Whistler is thrilling. Whistler is everything you hope a ski area will be when you plan your winter vacation. But most important of all is that Whistler is proof.Proof that such a place can exist in North America. U.S. America is stuck in a development cycle that typically goes like this:* Ski area proposes a new expansion/base area development/chairlift/snowmaking upgrade.* A small group of locals picks up the pitchforks because Think of the Raccoons/this will gut the character of our bucolic community of car-dependent sprawl/this will disrupt one very specific thing that is part of my personal routine that heavens me I just can't give up.* Said group files a lawsuit/formal objection/some other bureaucratic obstacle, halting the project.* Resort justifies the project/adapts it to meet locals' concerns/makes additional concessions in the form of land swaps, operational adjustments, infrastructure placement, and the like.* Group insists upon maximalist stance of Do Nothing.* Resort makes additional adjustments.* Group is Still Mad* Cycle repeats for years* Either nothing ever gets done, or the project is built 10 to 15 years after its reveal and at considerable extra expense in the form of studies, legal fees, rising materials and labor costs, and expensive and elaborate modifications to accommodate one very specific thing, like you can't operate the lift from May 1 to April 20 because that would disrupt the seahorse migration between the North and South Poles.In BC, they do things differently. I've covered this extensively, in podcast conversations with the leaders of Sun Peaks, Red Mountain, and Panorama. The civic and bureaucratic structures are designed to promote and encourage targeted, smart development, leading to ever-expanding ski areas, human-scaled and walkable base area infrastructure, and plenty of slopeside or slope-adjacent accommodations.I won't exhaust that narrative again here. I bring it up only to say this: Whistler has done all of these things at a baffling scale. A large, vibrant, car-free pedestrian village where people live and work. A gargantuan lift across an unbridgeable valley. Constant infrastructure upgrades. Reliable mass transit. These things can be done. Whistler is proof.That BC sits directly atop Washington State, where ski areas have to spend 15 years proving that installing a stop sign won't undermine the 17-year cicada hatching cycle, is instructive. Whistler couldn't exist 80 miles south. Maybe the ski area, but never the village. And why not? Such communities, so concentrated, require a small footprint in comparison to the sprawl of a typical development of single-family homes. Whistler's pedestrian base village occupies an area around a half mile long and less than a quarter mile wide. And yet, because it is a walkable, mixed-use space, it cuts down reliance on driving, enlivens the ski area, and energizes the soul. It is proof that human-built spaces, properly conceived, can create something worthwhile in what, 50 years ago, was raw wilderness, even if they replace a small part of the natural world.A note from Whistler on First NationsTrembath and I discuss Whistler's relationship with First Nations extensively, but her team sent me some follow-up information to clarify their role in the mountain's development:Belinda didn't really have time to dive into a very important piece of the First Nations involvement in the operational side of things:* There was significant engagement with First Nations as a part of developing the masterplans.* Their involvement and support were critical to the approval of the masterplans and to ensuring that all parties and their respective communities will benefit from the next 60 years of operation.* This includes the economic prosperity of First Nations – both the Squamish and Líl̓wat Nations will participate in operational success as partners.* To ensure this, the Province of British Columbia, the Resort Municipality of Whistler, Whistler Blackcomb and the Squamish and Líl̓wat Nations are engaged in agreements on how to work together in the future.* These agreements, known as the Umbrella Agreement, run concurrently with the Master Development Agreements and masterplans, providing a road map for our relationship with First Nations over the next 60 years of operations and development. * Key requirements include Revenue Sharing, Real Estate Development, Employment, Contracting & Recreational Opportunities, Marketing and Tourism and Employee Housing. There is an Implementation Committee, which oversees the execution of the agreement. * This is a landmark agreement and the only one of its kind within the mountain resort industry.What we got wrongI mentioned that “I'd never seen anything like” the lift mazes at Whistler, but that's not quite accurate. Vail Resorts deploys similar setups throughout its western portfolio. What I hadn't seen before is such choreographed and consistent navigation of these mazes by the skiers themselves. To watch a 500-person liftline squeeze itself into one loading ramp with no personnel direction or signage, and to watch nearly every chair lift off fully loaded, is to believe, at least for seven to nine minutes, in humanity as a worthwhile ongoing experiment.I said that Edge Cards were available for up to six days of skiing. They're actually available in two-, five-, or 10-day versions. If you're not familiar with Edge cards, it's because they're only available to residents of Canada and Washington State.Whistler officials clarified the mountain's spring skiing dates, which Trembath said started on May 14. The actual dates were April 15 to May 20.Why you should ski Whistler BlackcombYou know that thing you do where you step outside and you can breathe as though you didn't just remove your space helmet on the surface of Mars? You can do that at Whistler too. The village base elevation is 2,214 feet. For comparison's sake: Salt Lake City's airport sits at 4,227 feet; Denver's is at 5,434. It only goes up from there. The first chairlifts sit at 6,800 feet in Park City; 8,100 at Snowbird; 8,120 at Vail; 8,530 at Alta; 8,750 at Brighton; 9,000 at Winter Park; 9,280 at Keystone; 9,600 at Breckenridge; 9,712 at Copper Mountain; and an incredible 10,780 feet at Arapahoe Basin. Taos sits at 9,200 feet. Telluride at 8,750. Adaptation can be brutal when parachuting in from sea level, or some nominal inland elevation above it, as most of us do. At 8,500 feet, I get winded searching my hotel room for a power outlet, let alone skiing, until my body adjusts to the thinner air. That Whistler requires no such reconfiguration of your atomic structure to do things like blink and speak is one of the more underrated features of the place.Another underrated feature: Whistler Blackcomb is a fantastic family mountain. While Whistler is a flip-doodle factory of Stoke Brahs every bit the equal of Snowbird or Jackson Hole, it is not Snowbird or Jackson Hole. Which is to say, the place offers beginner runs that are more than across-the-fall line cat tracks and 300-vertical-foot beginner pods. While it's not promoted like the celebrated Peak-to-Creek route, a green trail (or sequence of them), runs nearly 5,000 uninterrupted vertical feet from Whistler's summit to the base village. In fact, with the exception of Blackcomb's Glacier Express, every one of the ski area's 16 chairlifts (even the fearsome Peak Express), and five gondolas offers a beginner route that you can ski all the way back to the base. Yes, some of them shuffle into narrow cat tracks for stretches, but mostly these are wide, approachable trails, endless and effortless, built, it seems, for ski-family safaris of the confidence-building sort.Those are maybe the things you're not thinking of. The skiing:Most skiers start with one of the three out-of-base village gondolas, but the new Fitz eight-seater rarely has a line. Start there:That's mostly a transit lift. At the top, head up the Garbanzo quad, where you can start to understand the scale of the thing:You're still not quite to the goods. But to get a sense of the mountain, ski down to Big Red:This will take you to Whistler's main upper-mountain portal, Roundhouse. From Whistler, you can see Blackcomb strafing the sky:From Roundhouse, it's a short ski down to the Peak Express:Depending upon your route down, you may end up back at Big Red. Ride back up to Roundhouse, then meander from Emerald to Harmony to Symphony lifts. For a moment on the way down Symphony, it feels like Euroski:Just about everyone sticks to the narrow groomers:But there are plenty of bumps and trees and wide-open bowls:Nice as this terrain is, the Peak 2 Peak Gondola summons you from all over the mountain:Whoosh. To Blackcomb in an instant, crossing the valley, 1,427 feet to the bottom, and out at Blackcomb's upper-mountain base, Rendezvous. Down to Glacier Express, and up a rolling fantasyland of infinite freeride terrain:And at the top it's like damn.From here, you can transfer to the Showcase T-bar if it's open. If not, climb Spanky's Ladder, and, Kaboom out on the other side:Ride Crystal Ridge or Excelerator back up, and run a lap through bowls and glades:Then ski back down to the village, ride Jersey Cream back to Rendezvous to connect to the spectacular 7th Heaven lift, or ride the gondy back over to Whistler to repeat the whole cycle. And that's just a sampling. I'm no Whistler expert - just go have fun and get lost in the whole thing.Podcast NotesOn the Lost Lifts of Park CityIt's slightly weird and enormously hilarious that the Fitzsimmons eight-seater that Whistler installed last summer and the Jersey Cream sixer that Blackcomb will drop on the mountain this year were originally intended for Park City. As I wrote in 2022:Last September, Vail Resorts announced what was likely the largest set of single-season lift upgrades in the history of the world: $315-plus million on 19 lifts (later increased to 21 lifts) across 14 ski areas. Two of those lifts would land in Park City: a D-line eight-pack would replace the Silverlode six, and a six-pack would replace the Eagle and Eaglet triples. Two more lifts in a town with 62 of them (Park City sits right next door to Deer Valley). Surely this would be another routine project for the world's largest ski area operator.It wasn't. In June, four local residents – Clive Bush, Angela Moschetta, Deborah Rentfrow, and Mark Stemler – successfully appealed the Park City Planning Commission's previous approval of the lift projects.“The upgrades were appealed on the basis that the proposed eight-place and six-place chairs were not consistent with the 1998 development agreement that governs the resort,” SAM wrote at the time. “The planning commission also cited the need for a more thorough review of the resort's comfortable carrying capacity calculations and parking mitigation plan, finding PCM's proposed paid parking plan at the Mountain Village insufficient.”So instead of rising on the mountain, the lifts spent the summer, in pieces, in the parking lot. Vail admitted defeat, at least temporarily. “We are considering our options and next steps based on today's disappointing decision—but one thing is clear—we will not be able to move forward with these two lift upgrades for the 22-23 winter season,” Park City Mountain Resort Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Deirdra Walsh said in response to the decision.One of the options Vail apparently considered was trucking the lifts to friendlier locales. Last Wednesday, as part of its year-end earnings release, Vail announced that the two lifts would be moved to Whistler and installed in time for the 2023-24 ski season. The eight-pack will replace the 1,129-vertical-foot Fitzsimmons high-speed quad on Whistler, giving the mountain 18 seats (!) out of the village (the lift runs alongside the 10-passenger Whistler Village Gondola). The six-pack will replace the Jersey Cream high-speed quad on Blackcomb, a midmountain lift with a 1,230-foot vertical rise.The whole episode is still one of the dumber things I'm aware of. There are like 80 lifts in Park City and two more (replacements, not all-new lines), apparently would have knocked the planet off its axis and sent us caterwauling into the sun. It's enough to make you un-see all the human goodness in Whistler's magical lift queues. More here.On Fitzsimmons 8's complex lineAmong the challenges of re-engineering the Fitzsimmons 8 for Whistler was the fact that the lift had to pass under the Whistler Village Gondola:Trembath and I talk a little about Fitz's download capability. Team Whistler sent over some additional information following our chat, indicating that the winter download capacity is four riders per chair (part of the original lift design, when it was meant for Park City). Summer download, for bike park operations, is limited to one passenger (a lower capacity than the original design).On Whistler's bike parkI'm not Bike Park Bro, though I could probably be talked into it fairly easily if I didn't already spend half the year wandering around the country in search of novel snowsportskiing operations. I do, however, ride my bike around NYC just about every day from May through October-ish, which in many ways resembles the giant jungle gyms that are downhill mountain bike parks, just with fewer jumps and a higher probability of decapitation by box truck.Anyway Whistler supposedly has the best bike park this side of Neptune, and we talk about it a bit, and so I'll include the trailmap even though I'd have a better chance of translating ancient Aramaic runes etched into a cave wall than I would of explaining exactly what's happening here:On Jersey Cream “not looking like much” on the trailmapBecause Whistler's online trailmap is shrunken to fit the same rectangular container that every ski map fills in the Webosphere, it fails to convey the scale of the operation (the paper version, which you can acquire if you slip a bag of gold bars and a map to the Lost City of Atlantis to a clerk at the guest services desk, is aptly called a “mountain atlas” and better captures the breadth of the place). The Jersey Cream lift and pod, for example, presents on the trailmap as an inconsequential connector lift between the Glacier Express and Rendezous station, where three other lifts convene. But this is a 1,230-vertical-foot, 4,647-foot-long machine that could, were you to hack it from the earth and transport it into the wilderness, be a fairly substantial ski area on its own. For context, 1,200 vertical feet is roughly the rise of Eldora or Monarch, or, for Easterners, Cranmore or Black Mountain.On the Whistler and Blackcomb masterplansUnlike the U.S. American Forest Service, which often fails to post ski area master development plans on their useless 1990s vintage websites, the British Columbia authorities have neatly organized all of their province's masterplans on one webpage. Whistler and Blackcomb mountains each file separate plans, last updated in 2013. That predates Vail Resorts' acquisition by three years, and Trembath and I discuss how closely (or not), these plans align with the company's current thinking around the resort.Whistler Mountain:Blackcomb Mountain:On Vail's Australian ski areasTrembath, at different points, oversaw all three of Vail Resorts' Australian ski areas. Though much of that tenure predated Vail's acquisitions (of Hotham and Falls Creek in 2019), she ran Perisher (purchased in 2015), for a year before leaping to the captain's chair at Whistler. Trembath provides a terrific breakdown of each of the three ski areas, and they look like a lot of fun:Perisher:Falls Creek:Hotham:On Sugar Bowl ParallelsTrembath's story follows a similar trajectory to that of Bridget Legnavsky, whose decades-long career in New Zealand included running a pair of that country's largest ski resorts. She then moved to North America to run a large ski area – in her case, Sugar Bowl near Lake Tahoe's North Shore. She appeared on the podcast in March.On Merlin EntertainmentI was unfamiliar with Merlin Entertainment, the former owner of Falls Creek and Hotham. The company is enormous, and owns Legoland Parks, Madame Tussauds, and dozens of other familiar brands.On Whistler and Blackcomb as formerly separate ski areasLike Park City (formerly Park City and Canyons) and Palisades Tahoe (formerly Alpine Meadows and Squaw Valley), Whistler and Blackcomb were once separate ski areas. Here's the stoke version of the mountains' joint history (“You were either a Whistler skier, or you were a Blackcomb skier”):On First Nations' language on lifts and the Gondola Gallery projectAs Whistler builds new lifts, the resort tags the lift terminals with names in English and First Nations languages. From Pique Magazine at the opening of the Fitzsimmons eight-pack last December:Whistler Mountain has a brand-new chairlift ready to ferry keen skiers and snowboarders up to mid-mountain, with the rebuilt Fitzsimmons Express opening to guests early on Dec. 12. …“Importantly, this project could not have happened without the guidance and counsel of the First Nations partners,” said Trembath.“It's so important to us that their culture continues to be represented across these mountains in everything we do.”In keeping with those sentiments, the new Fitzsimmons Express is emblazoned with First Nations names alongside its English name: In the Squamish language, it is known as Sk_wexwnách, for Valley Creek, and in the Lil'wat language, it is known as Tsíqten, which means Fish Spear.New chairlifts are given First Nations names at Whistler Blackcomb as they are installed and opened.Here's Fitzsimmons:And Big Red, a sixer installed two years ago:Whistler also commissioned First Nations artists to wrap two cabins on the Peak 2 Peak Gondola. From Daily Hive:The Peak 2 Peak gondola, which connects Whistler and Blackcomb mountains, is showing off artwork created by First Nations artists, which can be seen by mountain-goers at BC's premiere ski resort.Vail Resorts commissioned local Indigenous artists to redesign two gondola cabins. Levi Nelson of Lil'wat Nation put his stamp on one with “Red,” while Chief Janice George and Buddy Joseph of Squamish Nation have created “Wings of Thunder.” …“Red is a sacred colour within Indigenous culture, representing the lifeblood of the people and our connection to the Earth,” said Nelson, an artist who excels at contemporary Indigenous art. “These shapes come from and are inspired by my ancestors. To be inside the gondola, looking out through an ovoid or through the Ancestral Eye, maybe you can imagine what it's like to experience my territory and see home through my eyes.”“It's more than just the techniques of weaving. It's about ways of being and seeing the world. Passing on information that's meaningful. We've done weavings on murals, buildings, reviving something that was put away all those decades ago now,” said Chief Janice George and Buddy Joseph.“The significance of the Thunderbird being on the gondola is that it brings the energy back on the mountain and watching over all of us.”A pic:On Native American issues in the U.S.I referenced conflicts between U.S. ski resorts and Native Americans, without providing specifics. The Forest Service cited objections from Native American communities, among other factors, in recommending a “no action” alternative to Lutsen Mountains' planned expansion last year. The Washoe tribe has attempted to “reclaim” land that Diamond Peak operates on. The most prominent dispute, however, has been a decades-long standoff between Arizona Snowbowl and indigenous tribes. Per The Guardian in 2022:The Arizona Snowbowl resort, which occupies 777 acres (314 hectares) on the mountain's slope, has attracted skiers during the winter and spring for nearly a century. But its popularity has boomed in recent years thanks to growing populations in Phoenix, a three hour's drive away, and neighbouring Flagstaff. During peak ski season, the resort draws upwards of 3,000 visitors a day.More than a dozen Indigenous nations who hold the mountain sacred have fought Snowbowl's existence since the 1930s. These include the Pueblo of Acoma, Fort McDowell Yavapai; Havasupai; Hopi; Hualapai; Navajo; San Carlos Apache; San Juan Southern Paiute; Tonto Apache; White Mountain Apache; Yavapai Apache, Yavapai Prescott, and Pueblo of Zuni. They say the resort's presence has disrupted the environment and their spiritual connection to the mountain, and that its use of treated sewage effluent to make snow is akin to baptizing a baby with wastewater.Now, a proposed $60m expansion of Snowbowl's facilities has brought simmering tensions to a boil.The US Forest Service, the agency that manages the national forest land on which Snowbowl is built, is weighing a 15-year expansion proposal that would bulk up operations, increase visitation and add new summer recreational facilities such as mountain biking trails, a zip line and outdoor concerts. A coalition of tribes, meanwhile, is resisting in unprecedented ways.The battle is emblematic of a vast cultural divide in the American west over public lands and how they should be managed. On one side are mostly financially well-off white people who recreate in national forests and parks; on the other are Indigenous Americans dispossessed from those lands who are struggling to protect their sacred sites.“Nuva'tukya'ovi is our Mount Sinai. Why can't the forest service understand that?,” asks Preston.On the tight load at the 7th Heaven liftYikes:Honestly it's pretty organized and the wait isn't that long, but this is very popular terrain and the trails could handle a higher-capacity lift (nearly everyone skis the Green Line trail or one of the blue groomers off this lift, leaving hundreds of acres of off-piste untouched; it's pretty glorious).On Wizard and Solar CoasterEvery local I spoke with in Whistler grumped about the Blackcomb Gondola, which replaced the Wizard and Solar Coaster high-speed quads in 2018. While the 10-passenger gondy substantively follows the same lines, it fails to provide the same mid-mountain fast-lap firepower that Solar Coaster once delivered. Both because removing your skis after each lap is a drag, and because many skiers ride the gondola up to Rendezvous, leaving fewer free mid-mountain seats than the empty quad chairs once provided. Here's a before-and-after:On Whistler's season passWhistler's season pass, which is good at Whistler Blackcomb and only Whistler Blackcomb, strangely costs more ($1,047 U.S.) than a full Epic Pass ($1,004 U.S.), which also provides unlimited access to Whistler and Vail's other 41 ski areas. It's weird. Trembath explains.The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 42/100 in 2024, and number 542 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe
Today – we revisit the Sun's Jason Blevins conversation with Pat Milroy, a former professional snowboarder turned incredible artist. In this two part conversation, Pat shares a tale of survival, adventure, and introspection from his journey across the treacherous Red Mountain Pass, offering a vivid account of facing nature's fury head-on.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Text the ShowRed Mountain, one of the smallest and warmest Columbia Valley AVAs will impress you with wines that blend power and deftness. Invest 10 minutes with me to look into the causes of this wonderful mix of intensity and refreshment.ExploreAndrew Januik WinesJanuik WinesMark Ryan WinesMatthews
Before he was Rambo's commanding officer, Richard Crenna was a squeaky-voiced teenager on radio in Our Miss Brooks and A Date with Judy. His career began on the air and stretched into the early 2000s, and it included an Emmy win and starring roles on multiple TV shows. We'll hear him in a pair of radio thrillers: first, he's a young crook whose life of crime finally catches up with him in "The Prophecy of Bertha Abbott" (originally aired on CBS on October 16, 1956). Then, he's a man whose past life is about to catch up with him in "Night on Red Mountain" (originally aired on September 15, 1957). Plus, Crenna plays Walter Denton in "Stretch and Walter's Grudge Match" from Our Miss Brooks (originally aired on CBS on May 1, 1949).
Dane Tudor has had an incredible pro ski career that's been going on for 15+ years, and while he's getting older, Dane shows no sign of slowing down ski-wise, and no brands seem to care for some reason. When I say no signs of slowing down, in 2009, when Dane was 19, he won “Male Performance of the Year,” a huge award in skiing. Then, in 2023, 15 years later, Dane won that same coveted award again. While that's so rare, so is the fact that while he's always found success in both Moto and skiing, nothing has ever been easy for him on the sponsor end. Maybe it's because he didn't grow up with a dad or because he was always traveling between Canada and Alaska and was isolated with homeschooling…I try and find out the answers on the show, and Colston VB asks the Inappropriate Questions. Dane Tudor Show Notes: 5:00: Speedo's, born into adventure in AK and Aus, the impact of not having a dad, and Red Mountain 11:00: Homeschooling, Colston VB and the 2nd gen of the New School, self-confidence, attitude, and quitting ski racing 20:00 Stanley: Get up 60% off at Stanley1913.com Best Day Brewing: All of the flavor of your favorite IPA or Kolsch, without the alcohol, the calories and sugar. 23:00: Pro Moto dreams, back to extreme comps, then park, sponsors, filming with Theory 3, PBP, and Alaska, Elan Skis: Over 75 years of innovation that makes you better. 41:00: Peter Glenn Ski and Sports: Over 60 years of getting you out there. Outdoor Research : Click here for 25% off Outdoor Research products (not valid on sale items or pro products) 43:00: Fear, crashes, EDIAS, Best Male Performance at 19, Scott, getting hurt, triple in the backcountry, TGR and other film projects, and Best Male Performance in the Blank movie. 65:00: Inappropriate Questions with Colston VB
Website: https://provenandprobable.com/ Share this interview: https://youtu.be/SEV6TZHzzDQ Website: https://dollyvardensilver.com/ Corporate Deck: https://dollyvardensilver.com/presentation/ Joining us for a conversation is Rob Van Egmond, Vice-President of Exploration for Dolly Varden Silver, which has just announced another ambitious discovery and exploration drill program on the rich, high-grade gold/silver Kitsault Valley Project located in the prolific Golden Triangle of British Columbia. Find out why Rick Rule, Eric Sprott, Fidelity, Fury Gold Mines, Hecla Mining, Sprott USA, Delbrook and high-net worth investors are long-term shareholders in Dolly Varden Silver! Dolly Varden Silver Corporation is a mineral exploration company focused on advancing its 100% held Kitsault Valley Project located in the Golden Triangle of British Columbia, Canada, 25kms by road to deep tide water. The 163 sq. km. project hosts the high-grade silver and gold resources of Dolly Varden and Homestake Ridge along with the past producing Dolly Varden and Torbrit silver mines. It is considered to be prospective for hosting further precious metal deposits, being on the same structural and stratigraphic belts that host numerous other, on-trend, high-grade deposits, such as Eskay Creek and Brucejack. The project also contains the Big Bulk property which is prospective for porphyry and skarn style copper and gold mineralization, similar to other such deposits in the region (Red Mountain, KSM, Red Chris). The Company's common shares are listed and traded on the TSX.V under the symbol DV and on the OTCQX system under the symbol DOLLF. We are an education channel that promotes resource stocks, with a proven track record of success in resource stocks and (highest)
This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on April 16. It dropped for free subscribers on April 23. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoSteve Paccagnan, President and CEO of Panorama Mountain, British ColumbiaRecorded onMarch 27, 2024About PanoramaClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Panorama Mountain Village, Inc., a group of local investorsLocated in: Panorama, British Columbia, CanadaYear founded: 1962Pass affiliations:* Ikon Pass: 7 days, no blackouts* Ikon Base Pass: 5 days, holiday blackouts* Mountain Collective: 2 days, no blackouts* Lake Louise Pass: view details hereClosest neighboring ski areas: Fairmont Hot Springs (:45), Kimberley (1:43), Kicking Horse (1:54) – travel times will vary considerably depending upon road conditions and time of yearBase elevation: 3,773 feet/1,150 metersSummit elevation: 8,038 feet/2,450 metersVertical drop: 4,265 feet/1,300 metersSkiable Acres: 2,975Average annual snowfall: 204 inches/520 centimetersTrail count: 135 (30% expert, 20% advanced, 35% intermediate, 15% beginner)Lift count: 10 (1 eight-passenger pulse gondola, 2 high-speed quads, 2 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 1 double, 1 platter, 2 carpets – view Lift Blog's inventory of Panorama's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himU.S. America is making a mistake. In skiing, as in so many other arenas, we prioritize status quo protectionism over measured, holistic development that would reorient our built environments around humans, rather than cars, shrinking our overall impact while easing our access to the mountains and permitting more people to enjoy them. Our cluttered and interminable western approach roads, our mountain-town housing shortages, our liftlines backed up to Kansas are all the result of deliberate generational decisions to prioritize cars over transit, open space over dense walkable communities, and blanket wilderness protection over metered development of new public ski areas in regions where the established businesses - and their surrounding infrastructure - are overwhelmed.I write about these things a lot. This pisses some of you off. I'm OK with that. I'm not here to recycle the broken ideas that have made U.S. skiing into the mess that (in some fundamental ways, in certain regions) it is. I'm here to figure out how it can be better. The skiing itself, mind you, tends to be fabulous. It is everything that surrounds the mountains that can spoil the experience: the cost, the hassle, the sprawl. There are better ways to do this, to get people to the mountains and to house them there, both to live and to vacation. We know this because other countries already do a lot of the things that we ought to be doing. And the most culturally similar and geographically cozy one is so close we can touch it.U.S. America and U.S. Americans are ceding North American skiing's future to British Columbia. This is where virtually all of the continent's major resort development has occurred over the past three decades. Why do you suppose so many skiers from Washington State spend so much time at Whistler? Yes, it's the largest resort in North America, with knockout terrain and lots of snow. But Crystal and Stevens Pass and Baker all get plenty of snow and are large enough to give most skiers just about anything they need. What Whistler has that none of them do is an expansive pedestrian base village with an almost infinite number of ski-in, ski-out beds and places to eat, drink, and shop. A dense community in the mountains. That's worth driving four or more hours north for, even if you have to deal with the pain-in-the-ass border slowdowns to get there.This is not an accident, and Whistler is not an outlier. Over the past 30-plus years, the province of British Columbia has deliberately shaped its regulatory environment and developmental policies to encourage and lubricate ski resort evolution and growth. While all-new ski resort developments often stall, one small ski area after another has grown from community bump to major resort over the past several decades. Tiny Mount Mackenzie became titanic Revelstoke, which towers over even mighty Whistler. Backwater Whitetooth blew upward and outward into sprawling, ferocious Kicking Horse. Little Tod Mountain evolved into Sun Peaks, now the second-largest ski area in Canada. While the resort has retained its name over the decades, the transformation of Panorama has been just as thorough and dramatic.Meanwhile, in America, we stagnate. Every proposed terrain expansion or transit alternative or housing development crashes headfirst into a shredder of bureaucratic holdups, lawsuits, and citizen campaigns. There are too many ways to stop things, and too many people whose narrow visions of what the world ought to be blockade the sort of wholesale rethinking of community architecture that would make the mountains more livable and accessible.This has worked for a while. It's still sort of working now. But each year, as the same two companies sell more and more passes to access a relatively stable number of U.S. ski areas, the traffic, liftlines, and cost of visiting these large resorts grows. Locals will find a way, pick their spots. But destination skiers with a menu of big-mountain options will eventually realize that I-70 is not a mandatory obstacle to maneuver on a good ski vacation. They can head north, instead, with the same ski pass they already have, and spend a week at Red or Fernie or Kimberley or Revelstoke or Sun Peaks or Kicking Horse.Or Panorama. Three thousand acres, 4,265 vertical feet, no lines, and no hassle getting there other than summoning the patience to endure long drives down Canadian two-laners. As the U.S. blunders along, Canada kept moving. The story of Panorama shows us how.What we talked aboutA snowmaking blitz; what happened when Panorama joined the Ikon Pass; how Covid savaged the international skier game; Panorama in the ‘80s; Intrawest arrives; a summit lift at last; village-building; reviving Mt. Baldy, B.C.; Mont Ste. Marie and learning French; why Intrawest sold the ski area; modernizing the lift system; busy busy Copper; leaving for Kicking Horse; Resorts of the Canadian Rockies arrives; who owns Panorama; whether the resort will stay independent; potential lift replacements and terrain expansions; could we ever see a lift in Taynton Bowl?; explaining those big sections of the trailmap that are blocked off with purple borders; and whitebark pine conservation.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewIt wouldn't be fair to call Panorama a Powder Highway sleeper. The place seems to be doing fine as a business, with plenty of skier traffic to support continuous expansive infrastructure upgrades. But with lower average annual snowfall totals than Revy and Whitewater and Fernie and Red, Panorama does tend to get fewer shout-outs through the media and social media megaphones. It's Northstar to Palisades Tahoe, Keystone to A-Basin, Park City to the Cottonwoods: the less-snowy, less-intense neighbor that collects families in wholesome Build-A-Bear fashion.But Panorama is wrapping up its second full season on the Ikon Pass, and its second winter since Canada finally unlocked its Covid-era borders. What impact, if any, would those two developments have on Panorama's famously uncrowded slopes? Even if Colorad-Bro would never deign to turn his Subaru north, would Kansas Karl or North Dakota Norman load the kids into the minivan for something farther but less annoying?Not yet, it turns out. Or at least, not in great enough numbers to wreck the place. But there is another angle to the Panorama story that intrigues me. Like Copper Mountain, Mountain Creek, and Whistler, Panorama once belonged to Intrawest. Unlike Winter Park, Steamboat, Stratton, and Snowshoe, they did not remain part of the enterprise long enough to live second lives as part of Alterra Mountain Company. But what if they had? Our big-mountain coalitions have somewhat ossified over these past half-dozen years, so that we think of ski areas as Ikon mountains or Epic mountains or Indy mountains or independent mountains. But these rosters, like the composition of sports teams or, increasingly, leagues, can fluctuate wildly over time. I do wonder how Whistler would look under Alterra and Ikon, or what impact Mountain Creek-as-unlimited-Ikon mountain would have had on the megapass market in New York City? We don't really know. But Panorama, as a onetime Intrawest mountain that rejoined the family through the backdoor with Ikon membership, does give us a sort-of in-between case, a kind of What If? episode of skiing.Which would be a fun thought experiment under any circumstances. But how cool to hear about the whole evolution from a guy who saw it all happen first-hand over the course of four decades? Who saw it from all levels and from all angles, who knew the players and who helped push the boulder uphill himself? That's increasingly rare with big mountains, in this era of executive rotations and promotions, to get access to a top leader in possession of institutional knowledge that he himself helped to draft. It was, I'm happy to say, as good as I'd hoped.What I got wrongI said that Panorama was “one of the closest B.C. ski areas to the United States.” This is not quite right. While the ski area is just 100 or so miles from the international border, more than a dozen ski areas sit closer to the U.S., including majors such as Kimberley, Fernie, Whitewater, and Red Mountain.Why you should ski PanoramaLet's acknowledge, first of all, that Panorama has a few things working against it: it's more than twice as far from Calgary airport – most skiers' likely port of entry – than Banff and its trio of excellent ski areas; it's the least powdery major ski resort on the Powder Highway; and while the skiable acreage and vertical drop are impressive, skiers must ride three lifts and a Snowcat to lap much of the best terrain.But even that extra drive still gets you to the bump in under four hours on good roads – hardly an endurance test. Sure, they get more snow in Utah, but have you ever been in Utah on a powder day? Enjoy that first untracked run, because unless you're a local who knows exactly where to go, it will probably be your only one. And lapping multiple lifts is more of a psychological exercise than a practical one when there are few to no liftlines.And dang the views when you get there:There are plenty of large, under-trafficked ski resorts remaining in the United States. But they tend to be hundreds of miles past the middle of nowhere, with 60-year-old chairlifts and little or no snowmaking, and nowhere to sleep other than the back of your van. In BC, you can find the best of America's Big Empties crossed with the modern lift fleets of the sprawling conglomerate-owned pinball machines. And oh by the way you get a hell of a discount off of already low-seeming (compared to the big-mountain U.S.) prices: an American dollar, as of April 16, was worth $1.38 Canadian.Podcast NotesOn IntrawestPanorama, as a former Intrawest-owned resort, could easily have been part of Alterra Mountain Company right now. Instead, it was one of several ski areas sold off in the years before the legacy company stuffed its remainders into the Anti-Vail:On Mont Ste. MarieMont Ste. Marie is one of approximately 45,000 ski areas in Quebec, and the only one, coincidentally, that I've actually skied. Paccagnan happened to be GM when I skied there, in 2002:On Kicking HorseIt's incredible how many U.S. Americans remain unaware of Kicking Horse, which offers what is probably the most ferocious inbounds ski terrain in North America, 4,314 vertical feet of straight down:Well, almost straight down. The bottom bit is fairly tame. That's because Kicking Horse, like many B.C. ski areas, began as a community bump and exploded skyward with an assist from the province. Here's what the ski area, then known as “Whitetooth,” looked like circa 1994:This sort of transformation happens all the time in British Columbia, and is the result of a deliberate, forward-looking development philosophy that has mostly evaporated in the U.S. American West.On the Powder HighwayPanorama lacks the notoriety of its Powder Highway size-peers, mostly because the terrain is overall a bit milder and the volume of natural snow a bit lower than many of the other ski areas. Here's a basic Powder Highway map:And a statistical breakdown:On the Lake Louise PassI already covered this one in my podcast with Red Mountain CEO Howard Katkov a couple months back:Katkov mentions the “Lake Louise Pass,” which Red participates in, along with Castle Mountain and Panorama. He's referring to the Lake Louise Plus Card, which costs $134 Canadian up front. Skiers then get their first, fourth, and seventh days free, and 20 percent off lift tickets for each additional visit. While these sorts of discount cards have been diminished by Epkon domination, versions of them still provide good value across the continent. The Colorado Gems Card, Smugglers' Notch's Bash Badge, and ORDA's frequent skier cards are all solid options for skiers looking to dodge the megapass circus.On Panorama's masterplan:On Mt. Baldy, B.C.Paccagnan helped revitalize a struggling Mt. Baldy, British Columbia, in the 1990s. Here was the ski area's 1991 footprint:And here's what it looks like today – the ski area joined Indy Pass for the 2023-24 ski season:On Panorama's evolutionPanorama, like many B.C. ski areas, has evolved significantly over the past several decades. Here's what the place looked like in 1990, not long after Paccagnan started and before Intrawest bought the place. A true summit lift was still theoretical, Taynton Bowl remained out of bounds, and the upper-mountain lifts were a mix of double chairs and T-bars:By 1995, just two years after Intrawest had purchased the ski area, the company had installed a summit T-bar and opened huge tracts of advanced terrain off the top of the mountain:The summit T ended up being a temporary solution. By 2005, Intrawest had thoroughly modernized the lift system, with a sequence of high-speed quads out of the base transporting skiers to the fixed-grip Summit Quad. Taynton Bowl became part of the marked and managed terrain:On Whitebark Pine certificationA bit of background on Panorama's certification as a “whitebark pine-friendly ski resort” – from East Kootenay News Online Weekly:The Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation of Canada has certified Panorama Mountain Resort as a Whitebark Pine Friendly Ski Area, the first resort in Canada to receive this designation.The certification recognizes the resort's long and continued efforts to support the recovery of whitebark pine within its ski area boundary, a threatened tree species that plays a critical role in the biodiversity of mountain ecosystems. ,,,Found across the subalpine of interior B.C., Alberta and parts of the U.S, this slow growing, five needle pine is an integral part of an ecosystem that many other species depend on for survival. The tree's cones hold some of the most nutritious seeds in the mountains and sustain Grizzly bears and birds, including the Clark's nutcracker which has a unique symbiotic relationship with the tree. The deep and widespread roots of the whitebark pine contribute to the health of watersheds by stabilizing alpine slopes and regulating snowpack run-off.Over the past decade, whitebark pine numbers have fallen dramatically due in large part to a non-native fungal disease known as white pine blister rust that has been infecting and killing the trees at an alarming rate. Since 2012, the whitebark pine has been listed as endangered under the Government of Canada's Species at Risk Act (SARA), and was recently added to the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service's threatened species list.Panorama Mountain Resort has collaborated with the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation of Canada to facilitate restoration projects including cone collection and tree plantings within the resort's ski area.The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 31/100 in 2024, and number 531 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.stormskiing.com/subscribe
Inside Business Podcast Presented by The Mesa Chamber of Commerce
Mark Swift, General Manager of Red Mountain Ranch Country Club, joins Mesa Chamber President and CEO Sally Harrison in discussing the history of the Red Mountain Ranch golf course and the valuable membership services and amenities it offers. Learn more about the Red Mountain Ranch Country Club at: https://rmrcc.com The Mesa Chamber of Commerce Inside Business Podcast is a production of the Mesa Chamber of Commerce. Each episode is recorded in the University of Phoenix Podcast Studio. Inquiries regarding the MCIBP can be made via email to info@mesachamber.org. The Podcast interviews members and individuals/organizations on topics of interest to Mesa Chamber members. Learn more at http://mesachamber.org ©2024 Mesa Chamber of Commerce
This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Feb. 28. It dropped for free subscribers on March 6. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription (on sale at 15% off through March 12, 2024). You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoHoward Katkov, Chairman and CEO of Red Mountain Resort, British ColumbiaRecorded onFeb. 8, 2024About Red MountainClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Red Mountain VenturesLocated in: Rossland, British Columbia, CanadaYear founded: 1947 (beginning of chairlift service)Pass affiliations:* Ikon Pass: 7 days, no blackouts* Ikon Base Pass and Ikon Base Pass Plus: 5 days, holiday blackouts* Lake Louise Pass (described below)Closest neighboring ski areas: Salmo (:58), Whitewater (1:22), Phoenix Mountain (1:33), 49 Degrees North (1:53)Base elevation: 3,887 feet/1,185 metersSummit elevation: 6,807 feet/2,075 metersVertical drop: 2,919 feet/890 metersSkiable Acres: 3,850Average annual snowfall: 300 inches/760 cmTrail count: 119 (17% beginner, 34% intermediate, 23% advanced, 26% expert)Lift count: 8 (2 fixed-grip quads, 3 triples, 1 double, 1 T-bar, 1 carpet)View historic Red Mountain trailmaps on skimap.org. Here are some cool video overviews:Granite Mountain:Red Mountain:Grey Mountain:Rossland:Why I interviewed himIt's never made sense to me, this psychological dividing line between Canada and America. I grew up in central Michigan, in a small town closer to Canada (the bridge between Sarnia and Port Huron stood 142 miles away), than the closest neighboring state (Toledo, Ohio, sat 175 miles south). Yet, I never crossed into Canada until I was 19, by which time I had visited roughly 40 U.S. states. Even then, the place felt more foreign than it should, with its aggressive border guards, pizza at McDonald's, and colored currency. Canada on a map looks easy, but Canada in reality is a bit harder, eh?Red sits just five miles, as the crow flies, north of the U.S. border. If by some fluke of history the mountain were part of Washington, it would be the state's greatest ski area, larger than Crystal and Stevens Pass combined. In fact, it would be the seventh-largest ski area in the country, larger than Mammoth or Snowmass, smaller only than Park City, Palisades, Big Sky, Vail, Heavenly, and Bachelor.But, somehow, the international border acts as a sort of invisibility shield, and skiing Red is a much different experience than visiting any of those giants, with their dense networks of high-speed lifts and destination crowds (well, less so at Bachelor). Sure, Red is an Ikon Pass mountain, and has been for years, but it is not synonymous with the pass, like Jackson or Aspen or Alta-Snowbird. But U.S. skiers – at least those outside of the Pacific Northwest – see Red listed on the Ikon menu and glaze past it like the soda machine at an open bar. It just doesn't seem relevant.Which is weird and probably won't last. And right now Shoosh Emoji Bro is losing his goddamn mind and cursing me for using my platform focused on lift-served snowskiing to hype one of the best and most interesting and most underrated lift-served snowskiing operations in North America. But that's why this whole deal exists, Brah. Because most people ski at the same 20 places and I really think skiing as an idea and as an experience and as a sustainable enterprise will be much better off if we start spreading people out a bit more.What we talked aboutRed pow days; why Red amped up shuttle service between the ski area and Rossland and made it free; old-school Tahoe; “it is the most interesting mountain I've ever skied”; buying a ski area when you've never worked at a ski area; why the real-estate crash didn't bury Red like some other ski areas; why Katkov backed away from a golf course that he spent a year and a half planning at Red; why the 900 lockers at the dead center of the base area aren't going anywhere; housing and cost of living in Rossland; “we look at our neighborhood as an extension of our community of Rossland”; base area development plans; balancing parking with people; why and how Red Mountain still sells affordable ski-in, ski-out real estate; “our ethos is to be accessible for everybody”; whether we could ever see a lift from Rossland to Red; why Red conducted a crowd-funding ownership campaign and what they did with the money; Red's newest ownership partners; the importance of independence; “the reality is that the pass, whether it's the Epic or the Ikon Pass, has radically changed the way that consumers experience skiing”; why Red joined the Ikon Pass and why it's been good for the mountain; the Mountain Collective; why Red has no high-speed lifts and whether we could ever see one; no stress on a powder day; Red's next logical lift upgrades; potential lift-served expansions onto Kirkup, White Wolf, and Mt. Roberts; and the Powder Highway.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewMy full-scale assault of Canada, planned for 2023, has turned into more of an old-person's bus tour. I'm stopping at all the big sites, but I sure am taking my time, and I'm not certain that I'm really getting the full experience.Part of this echoes the realization centuries' of armies have had when invading Russia: damn this place is big. I'd hoped to quickly fold the whole country into the newsletter, as I'd been able to do with the Midwest and West when I expanded The Storm's coverage out of the Northeast in 2021. But I'd grown up in the Midwest and been skiing the West annually for decades. I'd underestimated how much that had mattered. I'd skied a bit in Canada, but not consistently enough to kick the door down in the manner I'd hoped. I started counting ski areas in Quebec and stopped when I got to 4,000*, 95 percent of which were named “Mont [some French word with numerous squiggly marks above the letters].” The measurements are different. The money is different. The language, in Quebec, is different. I needed to slow down.So I'm starting with western Canada. Well, I started there last year, when I hosted the leaders of SkiBig3 and Sun Peaks on the podcast. This is the easiest Canadian region for a U.S. American to grasp: Epic, Ikon, Mountain Collective, and Indy Pass penetration is deep, especially in British Columbia. Powdr, Boyne, Vail, and Pacific Group Resorts all own ski areas in the province. There is no language barrier.So, Red today, Panorama next month, Whistler in June. That's the way the podcast calendar sets up now, anyway. I'll move east as I'm able.But Red, in particular, has always fascinated me. If you're wondering what the largest ski area in North America is that has yet to install a high-speed lift, this is your answer. For many of you, that may be a deal-breaker. But I see a time-machine, an opportunity to experience a different sort of skiing, but with modern gear. Like if aliens were to land on today's Earth with their teleportation devices and language-translation brain chips and standard-issue post-industro-materialist silver onesies. Like wow look how much easier the past is when you bring the future with you.Someday, Red will probably build a high-speed lift or two or four, and enough skiers who are burned out on I-70 and LCC but refuse to give up their Ikon Passes will look north and say, “oh my, what's this all about?” And Red will become some version of Jackson Hole or Big Sky or Whistler, beefy but also busy, remote but also accessible. But I wanted to capture Red, as it is today, before it goes away.*Just kidding, there are actually 12,000.^^OK, OK, there are like 90. Or 90,000.Why you should ski Red MountainLet's say you've had an Ikon Pass for the past five or six ski seasons. You've run through the Colorado circuit, navigated the Utah canyons, circled Lake Tahoe. The mountains are big, but so are the crowds. The Ikon Pass, for a moment, was a cool little hack, like having an iPhone in 2008. But then everyone got them, and now the world seems terrible because of it.But let's examine ye ‘ole Ikon partner chart more closely, to see what else may be on offer:What's this whole “Canada” section about? Perhaps, during the pandemic, you resigned yourself to U.S. American travel. Perhaps you don't have a passport. Perhaps converting centimeters to inches ignites a cocktail of panic and confusion in your brain. But all of these are solvable dilemmas. Take a deeper look at Canada.In particular, take a deeper look at Red. Those stats are in American. Meaning this is a ski area bigger than Mammoth, taller than Palisades, snowy as Aspen. And it's just one stop on a stacked Ikon BC roster that also includes Sun Peaks (Canada's second-largest ski area), Revelstoke (the nation's tallest by vertical drop), and Panorama.We are not so many years removed from the age of slow-lift, empty American icons. Alta's first high-speed lift didn't arrive until 1999 (they now have four). Big Sky's tin-can tram showed up in 1995. A 1994 Skiing magazine article described the then-Squaw Valley side of what is now Palisades Tahoe as a pokey and remote fantasyland:…bottomless steeps, vast acreage, 33 lifts and no waiting. America's answer to the wide-open ski circuses of Europe. After all these years the mountain is still uncrowded, except on weekends when people pile in from the San Francisco Bay area in droves. Squaw is unflashy, underbuilt, and seems entirely indifferent to success. The opposite of what you would expect one of America's premier resorts to be.Well that's cute. And it's all gone now. America still holds its secrets, vast, affordable fixed-grip ski areas such as Lost Trail and Discovery and Silver Mountain. But none of them have joined the Ikon Pass, and none gives you the scale of Red, this glorious backwater with fixed-grip lifts that rise 2,400 vertical feet to untracked terrain. Maybe it will stay like this forever, but it probably won't. So go there now.Podcast NotesOn Red's masterplanRed's masterplan outlines potential lift-served expansions onto Kirkup, White Wolf, and Mount Roberts. We discuss the feasibility of each. Here's what the mountain could look like at full build-out:On Jane CosmeticsAn important part of Katkov's backstory is his role as founder of Jane cosmetics, a ‘90s bargain brand popular with teenagers. He built the company into a smash success and sold it to Estée Lauder, who promptly tanked it. Per Can't Hardly Dress:Lauder purchased the company in 1997. Jane was a big deal for Lauder because it was the company's first mass market drugstore brand. Up until that point, Lauder only owned prestige brands like MAC, Clinique, Jo Malone and more. Jane was a revolutionary move for the company and a quick way to enter the drugstore mass market.Lauder had no clue what do with Jane and sales plummeted from $50 million to $25 million by 2004. Several successive sales and relaunches also failed, and, according to the article above, “As it stands today, the brand is dunzo. Leaving behind a default Shopify site, an Instagram unupdated for 213 weeks and a Facebook last touched three years ago.”On Win Smith and SugarbushKatkov's story shares parallels with that of Win Smith, the Wall-Streeter-turned-resort-operator who nurtured Sugarbush between its days as part of the American Skiing Company shipwreck and its 2019 purchase by Alterra. Smith joined me on the podcast four years ago, post-Alterra sale, to share the whole story.On housing in Banff and Sun PeaksCanadian mountain towns are not, in general, backed up against the same cliff as their American counterparts. This is mostly the result of more deliberate regional planning policies that either regulate who's allowed to live where, or allow for smart growth over time (meaning they can build things without 500 lawsuits). I discussed the former model with SkiBig3 (Banff) President Pete Woods here, and the latter with Sun Peaks GM Darcy Alexander here. U.S. Americans could learn a lot from looking north.On not being able to buy slopeside real estate in Oregon, Washington, or California The Pacific Northwest is an extremely weird ski region. The resorts are big and snowy, but unless you live there, you've probably never visited any of them. As I wrote a few weeks back:Last week, Peak Rankings analyzed the matrix of factors that prevent Oregon and Washington ski areas, despite their impressive acreage and snowfall stats, from becoming destination resorts. While the article suggests the mountains' proximity to cities, lousy weather, and difficult access roads as blockers, just about every prominent ski area in America fights some combination of these circumstances. The article's most compelling argument is that, with few exceptions, there's really nowhere to stay on most of the mountains. I've written about this a number of times myself, with this important addendum: There's nowhere to stay on most of the mountains, and no possibility of building anything anytime soon.The reasons for this are many and varied, but can be summarized in this way: U.S. Americans, in thrall to an environmental vision that prizes pure wilderness over development of any kind, have rejected the notion that building dense, human-scaled, walkable mountainside communities would benefit the environment far more than making everyone drive to skiing every single day. Nowhere has this posture taken hold more thoroughly than in the Pacific Northwest.Snowy and expansive British Columbia, perhaps sensing a business opportunity, has done the opposite, streamlining ski resort development through a set of policies known as the B.C. Commercial Alpine Ski Policy. As a result, ski areas in the province have rapidly expanded over the past 30 years…California is a very different market, with plenty of legacy slopeside development. It tends to be expensive, however, as building anything new requires a United Nations treaty, an act of Jesus, and a total eclipse of the sun in late summer of a Leap Year. Perhaps 2024 will be it.On “Fight The Man, Own the Mountain”Red ran a crowd-funding campaign a few years back called “Fight the Man, Own the Mountain.” We discuss this on the pod, but here is a bit more context from a letter Katkov wrote on the subject:Investing in RED means investing in history, independence, and in this growing family that shares the same importance on lifestyle and culture. RED is the oldest ski resort in Western Canada and it has always been fiercely independent. There are not many, if any ski resorts left in North America like Red and the success of our campaign demonstrates a desire by so many of you to, help, in a small way, to protect the lifestyle, soul and ski culture that emanates from Red.RED is a place I've been beyond proud to co-own and captain since 2004 and the door is still open to share that feeling and be a part of our family. But please note that despite the friendly atmosphere, this is one of the Top 20 resorts in North America in terms of terrain. The snow's unreal and the people around here are some of the coolest, most down-to-earth folks you're ever likely to meet. (Trying to keep up with them on the hill is another thing entirely…)With $2 million so far already committed and invested, we wasted no time acting on promised improvements. These upgrades included a full remodel of fan favorite Paradise Lodge (incl. flush toilets!) as well as the expansion of RED's retail and High Performance centres. This summer we'll see the construction of overnight on-mountain cabins and the investor clubhouse (friends welcome!) as well as continued parking expansion. We've heard from a number of early investors that they were beyond stoked to enjoy the new Paradise Lodge so soon after clicking the BUY button. Hey, ownership has its privileges…On the Lake Louise PassKatkov mentions the “Lake Louise Pass,” which Red participates in, along with Castle Mountain and Panorama. He's referring to the Lake Louise Plus Card, which costs $134 Canadian up front. Skiers then get their first, fourth, and seventh days free, and 20 percent off lift tickets for each additional visit. While these sorts of discount cards have been diminished by Epkon domination, versions of them still provide good value across the continent. The Colorado Gems Card, Smugglers' Notch's Bash Badge, and ORDA's frequent skier cards are all solid options for skiers looking to dodge the megapass circus.On the Powder HighwayRed is the closest stop on the Powder Highway to U.S. America. This is what the Powder Highway is:And here's the circuit:Fairmont is just a little guy, but Kicking Horse, Kimberley, and Fernie are Epic Pass partners owned by Resorts of the Canadian Rockies, and Revy, Red, and Panorama are all on Ikon. Whitewater used to be on M.A.X. Pass, but is now pass-less. Just to the west of this resort cluster sits Big White (Indy), Silver Star (Ikon), and Sun Peaks (Ikon). To their east is Sunshine, Lake Louise, Norquay (all Ikon), and Castle (Indy). There are also Cat and heli-ski operations all over the place. You could lose a winter here pretty easily.On Katkov's business backgroundIn this episode of the Fident Capital Podcast, Katkov goes in-depth on his business philosophy and management style. Here's another:On bringing the city to the mountainsWhile this notion, rashly interpreted, could summon ghastly visions of Aspen-esque infestations of Fendi stores in downtown Rossland, it really just means building things other than slopeside mansions with 19 kitchens and a butler's wing. From a 2023 resort press release:Red Development Company, the real estate division of RED Mountain Resort (RED), in conjunction with ACE Project Marketing Group (ACE), recently reported the sell-out of the resort's latest real estate offering during the season opening of the slopes. On offer was The Crescent at RED, a collection of 102 homes, ranging from studio to one bedrooms and lofts featuring a prime ski in – ski out location. Howard Katkov, CEO of RED, and Don Thompson, RED President, first conceived of bringing the smaller urban living model to the alpine slopes in January 2021. ACE coined the concept as "everything you need and nothing you don't" …An important component was ensuring that the price point for The Crescent was accessible to locals and those who know and love the destination. With prices starting mid $300s – an excellent price when converted to USD – and with an achievable 5% deposit down, The Crescent at RED was easily one of the best value propositions in real estate for one of the best ranked ski resorts in North America. Not surprisingly, over 50% of the Crescent buyers were from the United States, spurred on by the extraordinary lifestyle and value offered by The Crescent, but also the new sparsity of Canadian property available to foreign buyers.As a good U.S. American, I ask Katkov why he didn't simply price these units for the one-percenters, and how he managed the House-Flipping Henries who would surely interpret these prices as opportunity. His answers might surprise you, and may give you hope that a different sort of ski town is possible.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 15/100 in 2024, and number 515 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe
EMISUNSHINE & The Rain is an award winning 17-year-old songwriter and ukulele virtuoso from East Tennessee, who has been attracting national attention since age 9 with appearances on “Today,” NBC's “Little Big Shots,” “American Idol,” the Grand Ole Opry, WoodSongs and more. With 9 albums released under her name, her 2022 album was titled ‘DIAMONDS' and she's currently working on two new albums, one bluegrass and one country. is an award winning 17-year-old songwriter and ukulele virtuoso from East Tennessee, who has been attracting national attention since age 9 with appearances on “Today,” NBC's “Little Big Shots,” “American Idol,” the Grand Ole Opry, WoodSongs and more. With 9 albums released under her name, her 2022 album was titled ‘DIAMONDS' and she's currently working on two new albums, one bluegrass and one country. The RED MOUNTAIN BOYS are based out of Colorado, carry the torch for traditional bluegrass, but their original songs make it sound brand-new. With four songwriters—including two award-winners and a Kansas Music Hall of Fame inductee—and four lifetimes of experience, the Red Mountain Boys perform with four-part harmony around one microphone in the style of the masters. are based out of Colorado, carry the torch for traditional bluegrass, but their original songs make it sound brand-new. With four songwriters—including two award-winners and a Kansas Music Hall of Fame inductee—and four lifetimes of experience, the Red Mountain Boys perform with four-part harmony around one microphone in the style of the masters. Reed Elliotte is a 12 year old pianist and singer from Corbin, KY.
In this interview we sit down Shawn Khunkhun the CEO of Dolly Varden Silver, which just announced Step-Out Drilling at Homestake Ridge Discovers New, High-Grade Gold Zone: 79.49 g/t Au over 12.45m, including 1,335 g/t Au over 0.68m. Find out why Eric Sprott, Rick Rule, Fidelity, Fury Gold Mines, Hecla Mining, Sprott, Delbrook, U.S. Global Investors are significant shareholders in Dolly Varden Silver. Dolly Varden Silver Corporation is a mineral exploration company focused on advancing its 100% held Kitsault Valley Project located in the Golden Triangle of British Columbia, Canada, 25kms by road to deep tide water. The 163 sq. km. project hosts the high-grade silver and gold resources of Dolly Varden and Homestake Ridge along with the past producing Dolly Varden and Torbrit silver mines. It is considered to be prospective for hosting further precious metal deposits, being on the same structural and stratigraphic belts that host numerous other, on-trend, high-grade deposits, such as Eskay Creek and Brucejack. The project also contains the Big Bulk property which is prospective for porphyry and skarn style copper and gold mineralization, similar to other such deposits in the region (Red Mountain, KSM, Red Chris). The Company's common shares are listed and traded on the TSX.V under the symbol DV and on the OTCQX system under the symbol DOLLF. Visit: https://dollyvardensilver.com/ Corporate Deck: https://dollyvardensilver.com/presentation/ Dolly Varden Silver Corp Head Office Suite 3123 – 595 Burrard Street PO Box 49139 Three Bentall Centre Vancouver, BC V7X 1J1 T: 604 609 5137 E: info@dollyvardensilver.com Proven and Probable is an education channel that promotes resource stocks, with a proven track record of success in resource stocks and (highest)
Today – Picking up from where we left off yesterday… Pat Milroy, former professional snowboarder turned artist, shares more of his story of survival from a journey across the treacherous Red Mountain Pass in this conversation with Jason Blevins.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Today – The Colorado Sun's Jason Blevins sits down with Pat Milroy, a former professional snowboarder turned incredible artist. In this two part conversation, Pat shares a tale of survival, adventure, and introspection from his journey across the treacherous Red Mountain Pass, offering a vivid account of facing nature's fury head-on. https://coloradosun.com/2024/02/01/outsider-20240201/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this interview with sit down with Shawn Khunkhun the CEO of Dolly Varden Silver (TSX.V: DV | OTCQX: DOLLF) to discuss the disconnect with Silver and Silver Equities, the latest news regarding more high-grade Silver results from the Homestake Silver Deposit, and the recent consolidation with addition of the Big Bulk Copper-Gold Porphyry Project. Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 0:29 Disconnect on Silver and Silver Equities 8:25 Who is Dolly Varden Silver? 9:44 Homestake Silver Deposit Expansion Width and Depth 12:58 If Proposition, or a When Proposition? 13:10 Big Bulk Copper Gold Porphyry Consolidation, Commercial Success, Infrastructure 17:25 Business and Geological Acumen 17:48 Goals for 2024 20:50 Capital Structure Overview 21:50 What keeps you up at night that we don't know about 25:48 What did I forget to ask Dolly Varden Silver Corporation is a mineral exploration company focused on advancing its 100% held Kitsault Valley Project located in the Golden Triangle of British Columbia, Canada, 25kms by road to deep tide water. The 163 sq. km. project hosts the high-grade silver and gold resources of Dolly Varden and Homestake Ridge along with the past producing Dolly Varden and Torbrit silver mines. It is considered to be prospective for hosting further precious metal deposits, being on the same structural and stratigraphic belts that host numerous other, on-trend, high-grade deposits, such as Eskay Creek and Brucejack. The project also contains the Big Bulk property which is prospective for porphyry and skarn style copper and gold mineralization, similar to other such deposits in the region (Red Mountain, KSM, Red Chris). The Company's common shares are listed and traded on the TSX.V under the symbol DV and on the OTCQX system under the symbol DOLLF. We are an education channel that promotes resource stocks, with a proven track record of success in resource stocks and (highest)
Share This Video: https://youtu.be/TU1V7bhdRQ0 In this conversation we sit down Shawn Khunkhun the CEO of Dolly Varden Silver which has just announced another impressive discovery, this time on a step-out drill on the high-grade Wolf Vein Deposit, which is one of seven high-grade deposits on the Kitsault Valley Project, located in the prolific 'Golden Triangle' in British Columbia. Equally important, viewers will note that Hecla Mining has just increased their strategic position in Dolly Varden Silver with a $10,000,000 investment, which was consummated last week. Find out the details right here! Dolly Varden Silver Corporation is a mineral exploration company focused on advancing its 100% held Kitsault Valley Project located in the Golden Triangle of British Columbia, Canada, 25kms by road to deep tide water. The 163 sq. km. project hosts the high-grade silver and gold resources of Dolly Varden and Homestake Ridge along with the past producing Dolly Varden and Torbrit silver mines. It is considered to be prospective for hosting further precious metal deposits, being on the same structural and stratigraphic belts that host numerous other, on-trend, high-grade deposits, such as Eskay Creek and Brucejack. The project also contains the Big Bulk property which is prospective for porphyry and skarn style copper and gold mineralization, similar to other such deposits in the region (Red Mountain, KSM, Red Chris). The Company's common shares are listed and traded on the TSX.V under the symbol DV and on the OTCQX system under the symbol DOLLF. The supply and demand fundamentals for silver play a significant role in determining its market price. Here's a brief overview: SUPPLY: Mining: The primary source of silver is mining. Silver is extracted from various ores, including silver sulfide, silver chloride, and silver bromide. Mining companies around the world extract silver as a byproduct of mining other metals like zinc, lead, and copper. Recycling: Silver is also sourced from recycling efforts, including electronic waste, jewelry, and industrial scraps. Recycling helps supplement the supply of silver in the market. Production Trends: Silver production can be influenced by economic factors, technological advancements in mining techniques, and environmental regulations. Mining companies' production decisions are influenced by the prevailing market prices. DEMAND: Industrial Usage: Silver is widely used in various industrial applications, including electronics, solar panels, photography, and medical devices. The demand for these products affects the overall demand for silver. Investment: Silver is considered a store of value, similar to gold. Investors buy silver coins, bars, and other forms of bullion as an investment, especially during economic uncertainties, which can drive up demand. Jewelry and Silverware: Traditional uses like jewelry and silverware contribute to silver demand, although this segment of the market is often sensitive to changes in economic conditions. Global Economic Factors: Economic growth, inflation rates, and geopolitical stability can influence silver demand. During economic downturns, industrial demand may decrease, affecting overall demand. Currency and Speculation: Silver futures and options trading, as well as currency fluctuations, can also influence short-term demand and price movements. We are an education channel that promotes resource stocks, with a proven track record of success in resource stocks and (highest)
Hopestream for parenting kids through drug use and addiction
Among the red rock cliffs of Sedona, a group of young adults sit together in the Arizona sun, meditating with their roshi - a master instructor in zen tradition. Many of the students have already been through wilderness therapy or other recovery programs. They reside at nearby Red Mountain Sedona, an independent living program where they're learning how to integrate, alongside more traditional therapies, mindfulness practices to create a healthy, productive, and sustainable substance-free life.My guest today is the founder of Red Mountain, Josh White, who is also a clinical mental health counselor, certified group psychotherapist, and second-ranking practitioner of Ten-Chi kenpo in the world. In this episode, we discuss the incredible power that meditation and mindfulness practice can give young people in recovery - stepping outside cravings and impulses, observing them, interrogating them, and allowing them to pass. This conversation will also be my first foray into the issue of eating disorders, which Josh will place in the overall context of addiction. Over the course of this discussion, we'll talk about:How we build the muscles of mindfulnessHow young people today respond to the concept of using mindfulness in their quest for recovery from substance misuseThe difference between meditation and mindfulness, and their individual roles in recoveryHow the isolation of covid and social media are affecting eating disorders and body issues in young peopleThe podcast is now part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community: www.hopestreamcommunity.orgLearn about The Stream, our private online community for moms, at www.hopestreamcommunity.org/the-stream/Find us on Instagram: @hopestreamcommunityDownload my free e-book, HINDSIGHT: Three Things I Wish I Knew When My Son Was Misusing Drugs: www.brendazane.com/hindsightJoin my email list: www.brendazane.com/email
Adventure: Suspense “Night on Red Mountain” 11/20/60 CBS, Bold Venture “A Voodoo Vendetta in Paradise” 1951 Syndicated.
This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Feb. 22. It dropped for free subscribers on Feb. 25. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoDave Scanlan, General Manager of Eaglecrest, AlaskaRecorded onFebruary 13, 2023About EaglecrestClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The City of JuneauLocated in: Juneau, AlaskaYear founded: 1975Pass affiliations: Indy Pass, Powder Alliance, Freedom PassReciprocal partners:* 3 days each at: Anthony Lakes, Diamond Peak, Hilltop, Hogadon Basin, Lookout Pass, Monarch Mountain, Mount Bohemia, Mount Sima, Mount Ashland, Skeetawk, Skiland* 1 unguided day at Silverton* Eaglecrest has one of the most extensive reciprocal networks in America. Here's an overview of everything that's included in a season pass, which debuted for this season at $576. While there's a ton of overlap, adding an Indy Pass onto this would give you another 50-plus ski areas:Closest neighboring ski areas: Eaglecrest's website reminds us that “There are no roads into Juneau, Alaska— you have to live here, fly, or ferry to experience this powder paradise.” There are no other ski areas nearby. So stay for a few days and enjoy it.Base elevation: 1,130 feetSummit elevation: 2,750 feetVertical drop: 1,620 feetSkiable Acres: 640Average annual snowfall: 350 inchesTrail count: 36 (40% advanced/expert, 40% intermediate, 20% beginner)Lift count: 4 doubles – Eaglecrest also plans to add a pulse gondola, which will likely be ready for the 2025 summer season and 2025-26 ski season.Why I interviewed himThis podcast started, as so many of them do, with me asking one question: what is going on here?Every ski area is different, but some are more different than others. Mount Bohemia, with its complete absence of grooming and snowmaking and $109 season pass. Perfect North, which sits on southern Indiana farmland but processes more than 10,000 skiers on a busy day and employs 1,200 workers in the winter – bigger numbers than some Western alphas. Black Mountain of Maine, which, over the past decade, has undergone the largest expansion of any New England ski area – with zero promotion, masterplanning, or fanfare.And here's Eaglecrest. This ski area up in Alaska. But not just regular Alaska. Isolated coastal Alaska. Where roads don't go. You have to fly or take a ferry. There, for some reason, is where the 49th state chose to locate its capital, Juneau. The state's residents have voted many times to move the capital. But it remains. It is a gorgeous place, mountains launching dramatically from the water. There are 31,000 people there. And one ski area. Eaglecrest is big enough to stir curiosity, but not big enough to draw skiers in volume from the mainland, who have dozens of larger ski areas to bounce between. It is an Indy Pass member, a Freedom Pass member, a Powder Alliance member. It has a dozen reciprocal partnerships besides. Almost anyone can ski there – almost no one does. So what is this place? This city-owned ski area at the end of civilization? And what does it want to be? And how does it plan to get there?I had questions. Scanlan had answers. This is a good one.What we talked aboutFifteen straight days of snow is just how they roll in Southern Alaska; the Pineapple Express; if you think Alaska is all dark and subzero weather, think again; skiing in fishing gear; “we don't have the big testosterone bro-brah attitude”; is Juneau ski bum paradise?; where a crowd on a Saturday pow day is a dozen early-risers ahead of you in the maze; Midwest pride; bump skiing at Wilmot; when “you fall in love with it not for the hype of a powder day, but for the feeling you get when you're on your skis or snowboard”; a young vagabond in the ‘90s; Hope Alaska; founding the Mountain Rider's Alliance to help small ski areas; the potential for resurrecting the long-lost Manitoba Mountain, Alaska; Skeetawk (Hatcher Pass); moving to and running Mt. Abram, Maine; what it's like to compete with Sunday River; hardcore New England; Maine nice; landing a dream job at Eaglecrest; reworking the primitive snowmaking system; the pros and cons of running a city-owned ski area; whether Eaglecrest could ever survive without city subsidies; massive summer potential; easier to get to than you think: “If you live in Seattle, you can be sitting on the chair at Eaglecrest before most days you could be sitting on the chair at Crystal”; fly and ski free with your boarding pass; pushing back against locals who want to keep the place secret; why Eaglecrest has so many reciprocal partners and how effectively that's drawing skiers to Alaska; why you saw an Eaglecrest booth at the Snowbound Festival in Boston; Indy Pass; comparing the coming Eaglecrest gondola installation with how the Lone Peak Tram transformed Big Sky in the 1990s; 20,000 daily summer visitors to a town that has 30,000 residents; “how do I take advantage of this amazing opportunity to put the cash in the pocket that I need to turn Eaglecrest into the best ski area in the world?”; why low-capacity lifts will continue to be Eaglecrest's default; the drive to begin relocating quality used ski lifts from Europe to North America; breaking down Eaglecrest's soon-to-be-installed fixed-grip pulse gondola; where the gondola's top, bottom, and midstations will sit; how much larger Eaglecrest's trail footprint will get; “I do carry some guilt of polarizing our ski community” by putting a lift into what's now hike-in terrain; why the ski area needs investment to survive; thoughts on the future of the four double chairs; visiting and riding the future Eaglecrest gondola in Europe; massive upgrades for the lift; how the gondola will work with the Mt. Roberts Tram; a gondy timeline; potential for a beginner carpet; and how much the official count of 36 trails undersells the resort's terrain. Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewEaglecrest is, as noted above, one of the continent's most aggressive Megapass-Reciprocity players. That makes it an important mountain in an important Storm sub-narrative: how can you ski as much as possible, at as many ski areas as possible, for as little money as possible? While Eaglecrest's network (50-ish partners), and pass price-point ($576 early-bird for 2022-23) don't quite drop it into the Ski Cooper realm ($329 early-bird for this season and 61 partner ski areas), it nonetheless acts as a powerful enabling device for skiers with an adventurous bent and a small degree of logistical savvy.The question, of course, is why Eaglecrest bothers. The place is marooned along the North American coast, one of the few non-island cities unreachable by road from the rest of the landmass. I'm sure some Eaglecrest locals journey south by plane and orchestrate a ski loop through the continental West. But I'm not sure if that's the point here. Rather, Eaglecrest is trying to get skiers to come to them, to realize that if they hop a plane two-and-a-half hours north, they can land in the Great Unspoiled and have a powder-draped ski area to themselves.The goal is to create long-term skiers. Tourists, you know. And once they've seen what the place is now, they'll be revved up to return once Eaglecrest runs a new-used pulse gondola from its base to the top of Pittman's Ridge. That will bring lift service to the ski area's full 1,620-foot vertical drop for the first time and, more importantly, open hundreds of new acres of terrain skier's left of the current boundary.If you're not familiar with a pulse gondola, you may have seen them at Snowmass or Steamboat – they run with little groups of cabins together, and are typically used in America more as transit lifts than ski lifts (the Snowmass lift mostly takes passengers up the village, and Steamboat's lift moves skiers up from a cluster of condos down the mountain). These are fixed-grip lifts, but travel at tram speeds – Scanlan estimates the base-to-summit ride at around seven minutes. The lift will travel in three pods of 15-passenger cabins and will have a mid-station, off of which Eaglecrest could eventually build a learning area with carpets, Scanlan tells me. The yellow line here shows where the gondola will run on the mountain - the red lines represent the current lifts:The lift has been controversial. It's 34 years old, and operated at Austria's Galsterberg Ski Area until last April. It cost approximately $2.5 million to purchase and transport, and will cost an additional $5.5 million to install. It will operate at a far lower capacity than a modern detachable gondola, which is what most U.S. ski areas use. Critics say the gondola competes with the private sector – in particular, the Mount Roberts Tramway.Scanlan addresses each of these points in our conversation, with a nuanced analysis of Juneau's thumping summer tourism season and how Eaglecrest can both act as a relief valve and boost its own long-term goal of financial independence.Questions I wish I'd askedTwo points I wanted to discuss that I didn't get to: how much the gondola will cost, and Eaglecrest's very low lift ticket prices, which top out at $68. The ski area breaks down the cost in an FAQ on its website:Q: I've heard about a $2 million cost and a $7.5 million cost. Which amount is correct?$2 million [it ended up being $2.5 million] covers the initial purchase, transportation, and preliminary engineering of the Austrian pulse gondola. The funding ordinance currently under review is for this sum.$5.5 million covers the cost of installation and additional infrastructure. Eaglecrest may eventually seek this sum as a loan to be paid back by summer operations. This number will be refined in the months ahead as we continue work with the Eaglecrest Board and Eaglecrest Summer Task Force to examine the business case and evaluate future costs.Why you should ski EaglecrestBecause this might be it. Survey the West: it's full. Colorado High Country, the Wasatch, Tahoe, the Seattle and Portland day-drivers, Jackson, Mammoth, Big Sky – it's traffic or it's ticket limits or it's sticker-shock pricing or it's rivers of people or it's the raw cost of living and everything else. Or it's several or all of these factors, blended, to frustrate the romance of mountain-town living.Not that rustic snowy backwaters don't remain. But they are backwaters. Places like Turner, Montana, 2,110 vertical feet and 1,000 acres but lodged in the wilderness between Schweitzer and Whitefish. Sunrise Park, Arizona, 1,800 feet of vert and 1,200 acres, but marooned 90 miles from the nearest interstate highway and so dysfunctional that a huge chunk of the mountain sat inaccessible for five years after their monster triple chair broke down (it now takes three lift rides to reach that same terrain).But look north. Look at this:If you haven't watched yet, let me pull one stat: Scanlan says on this video that a busy day at Eaglecrest – a weekend powder day, for instance – might draw 900 skiers. For the day. There's more people waiting in the average McDonald's drive-through line than that.“Yeah Brah but it's small.”Watch the video, Brah.“Yeah but it gets like half the snow of Mt. Tahoe, where my boys ride Brah.”Watch the video.“Yeah but it's in Alaska and I don't see the point of skiing in Europe when I can ski right here in U.S. America.”Brah, watch the video.As mainland Western U.S. skiing boils over, Eaglecrest remains on a low simmer. And while you'll need an airplane to get there, you land in a state capital, with all the infrastructure and life conveniences that attend such a place. Juneau is a small city – 31,000 people – but an important one, with abundant stable government and industrial fishing jobs. It's big enough to host a woo-hoo walkable downtown and all the standard American big-box claptrap on the outskirts, small enough that unloading every skier in the valley onto Eaglecrest's access road won't be enough to clog the drain. And when you arrive, you just ski. No parking drama. No lines. No Powder Day Death Matches. Just. Ski.Yes, the lifts are old and slow: four fixed-grip doubles. Yes, accessing the full vert requires some hiking. Yes, coastal snow is not Wasatch snow. And yes, the total skiable acreage does not match your big-mountain Western destinations. But: recalibrate. Reset your expectations. Stripped of the hoards and the Hunger Games mentality they inspire, skiing is something different. A 10-minute lift ride is not so intolerable when you ski right onto the chair. Six hundred forty acres is plenty when it's mostly ungroomed faces sparsely cut by the local bombers. Three hundred fifty inches is sufficient when it tumbles over the mountain in lake-effect patterns, a few inches every day for weeks at a time, refreshing and resetting the incline day after day.Eaglecrest is going to get bigger, better, and, probably, busier. That gondola will change how Eaglecrest skis and, eventually, who skis there. It's not a destination yet, not really. But it could be. And it probably should be – we're rapidly moving past the era in which it makes sense for city tax dollars to subsidize a ski area. There are plenty of examples of publicly owned ski areas operating at a profit, and Eaglecrest should too. Go there now, before the transformation, to see it, to say you were there, to try that different thing that gets at what you're probably looking for in the mountains already.Podcast NotesOn the gondolaWe referenced a note Scanlan penned shortly after taking delivery of the gondola. Read it in full here.On Manitoba MountainScanlan tells the story of trying to resurrect a small ski area called Manitoba Mountain near Hope Alaska. It had operated with up to three ropetows from World War II until the lodge burned down in 1960. Skimap.org has archived a handful of concept maps circa 2011, but Scanlan moved to Maine to take over Mt. Abram before he could re-open the ski area:On Skeetawk/Hatcher PassScanlan and I discuss a recently opened Alaska ski area that he refers to as “Hatcher Pass.” This is Skeetawk, a 300-vertical-foot bump that finally opened in 2020 after decades of failed plans. Here's the ski area today:And here's a circa 2018 concept map, which shows where a future high-speed quad could run, connecting, in turn, to a high-alpine lift that would transport skiers to 4,068 feet. That would give the ski area a 2,618-foot vertical drop.On the impact of the Big Sky tramIt's hard to imagine, but Big Sky was sort of Small Sky before the ski area broke out the Lone Peak Tram in 1995. That project, which acted as a gateway to all-American pants-shitting terrain, transformed the way skiers perceived the mountain. But the tram was bigger than that: the lift accelerated the rapid late-90s/early-2000s evolution of U.S. skiing as a whole. An excerpt from this excellent history by Marc Peruzzi:As unpolished, friendly, and authentic as Big Sky was in the early 1980s, it was a timid place known within Montana for stunning views, but exceedingly gentle pitches. Big Sky was the yin to rowdy, chute-striped Bridger Bowl's yang. And it was struggling. Annual skier visits hovered around 80,000. The mountain wasn't on the destination circuit. The business was losing money. Bound up skiing wasn't working. …it's easy to overlook the fact that the Lone Peak Tram was and is the most audacious lift in North American skiing history. It was such a bold idea in fact, that John Kircher had to agree to the purchase without the approval of his father, and Boyne Resorts founder, Everett who disapproved vehemently with the project. The audacious claim is not hyperbole. The Peak 2 Peak Gondola in Whistler (it came 20 years later) might sport a longer span, but it was a far more straightforward installation and it's more of a people mover than a ski lift. The Jackson and Snowbird trams serve serious terrain, but they run over a series of towers like traditional lifts. The Lone Peak Tram is an anomaly. Because it ascends a sheer face, the lift features a continuous span that's unique in North America. No other design would work. Beyond the challenges of the cliff, the routine 120mph hour winds in the alpine would rip chairs off cables and smash tram cars into towers. …By 1996, the year the tram opened, the skiing nanny state was crumbling. … At the forefront of this change was the Lone Peak Tram. It changed the mindset of the ski industry. But that change was bigger than the sheer audacity of the lift and the terrain it served—or even the fact that Big Sky's patrol had figured out how to manage it. The Lone Peak Tram didn't just make for good skiing, it made good business sense. Whereas Kircher is quick to credit Montana's frontier culture for the actual construction of the tram, Middleton discounts the cowboy element and insists it was a strategic long-term business play to elevate the ski experience. But two things can be true at the same time, and that's the case with the Lone Peak Tram. …In the years after the Lone Peak Tram opened, expansion into steep terrain became commonplace again. Sunshine Village's Delirium Dive opened in 1998. Then came the hike-to terrain of Aspen Highlands' Highland Bowl; Crystal Mountain's “inbounds sidecountry” in the Southback zone, and its 2007 Northway expansion; and more recently Taos Ski Valley in New Mexico finally strung a lift to Kachina Peak, which as with Lone Peak had been hiked for years. Any skier worth their weight would add the Headwaters at Moonlight to that list.This video tells the story just as well:The context in the podcast was the incoming Eaglecrest gondola, and whether that lift could have the same transformative impact on Eaglecrest. While the terrain that the new-used Alaskan lift will serve is not quite as dramatic as that strafing Big Sky, it will reframe the ski area in the popular conversation.On ski pornI don't write a lot about athletes, obviously, but Scanlan mentions several that he skied with at summer camps on the Blackcomb Glacier back in the ‘90s. One is Candide Thovex, who is like from another galaxy or a CG bot or something:On old-school Park CityScanlan talks about the summer he helped yank out the “old-school” Park City gondola and install the “Payday six-packs.” He was referring to the Payday and Bonanza sixers, which replaced the mountain's two-stage, four-passenger gondola in the summer of 1997. Here's the 1996 trailmap, showing the gondy, which had run since 1963:And here's the 1997-98 trailmap, calling out the new six-packs as only a 1990s trailmap can:On old-school AltaModern Alta – the one that most of you know, with its blazing fast lifts and Ikon Pass partnership – is a version of Alta that would have been sacrilege to the powder monks who haunted the place for decades. “The ski area for traditionalists, ascetics, and cheapskates,” read one Skiing Magazine review in 1994. “The lifts are slow and creaky, the accommodations are spartan, but the lift tickets are the best deal in skiing, especially when Alta's fabled powder comes with them.” Here's what Alta looked like in 2000, the year before Sugarloaf gave way to the resort's first high-speed chairlift:This is the Alta of Scanlan's ski-bum days, “before the high-speeders came in,” as he puts it. Before the two-stage Collins lift took out Germania (which lives on at Beaver Mountain, Utah), a longer Supreme killed Cecret, and a new Sunnyside sixer deleted Albion, which served Alta's boring side. Before a peak-day walk-up lift ticket ran $179 (throw in another $40 if you want to connect to Snowbird). They do, however, still have the stupid snowboard ban, so there's that.On previous GM Matt LillardScanlan and I discuss his immediate predecessor, Matt Lillard, who is now running Vermont's Mad River Glen. Lillard joined me on the podcast three years ago, and we briefly discussed Eaglecrest:On GunstockScanlan compares Eaglecrest's operating and ownership models to Gunstock, noting, “we've all seen how that can go.” We sure have:On Eaglecrest's fly-and-ski-free programHere are details on how to cash in your boarding pass for an Eaglecrest lift ticket on the day you land in Juneau. Alaska Airlines offers similar deals at Alyeska, Bogus Basin, Red Lodge, Red Mountain, Schweitzer, Marmot Basin, and, shockingly, Steamboat, where a one-day lift ticket can cost as much as a 747.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 14/100 in 2023, and number 400 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com.The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing all year long. Join us. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe
CardioNerds Cofounder Dr. Amit Goyal join Dr. Usman Hasnie and Dr. Will Morgan from University of Alabama at Birmingham for a hike up Red Mountain. They discuss the following case: A 75-year-old woman with prior mitral valve ring annuloplasty presented with subacute, intermittent, self-limiting neurologic deficits. Brain MRI revealed multiple subacute embolic events consistent with cardioembolic phenomena. Transesophageal echochardiogram discovered a mobile mass on the mitral valve as the likely cause for cardioembolic stroke. She was taken for surgical repair of the mitral valve. Tissue biopsy confirmed that the mass was an IgG4-related pseudotumor. Expert commentary is provided by Dr. Neal Miller (Assistant Professor of Cardiology, University of Alabama at Birmingham). Audio editing by CardioNerds Academy Intern, student doctor Adriana Mares Check out this published case report here: IgG4-Related Disease Masquerading as Culture-Negative Endocarditis! CardioNerds Case Reports PageCardioNerds Episode PageCardioNerds AcademyCardionerds Healy Honor Roll CardioNerds Journal ClubSubscribe to The Heartbeat Newsletter!Check out CardioNerds SWAG!Become a CardioNerds Patron! Pearls - Cardioembolic Stroke due to an IgG4-related pseudotumor Surgical indications for endocarditis include severe heart failure, valvular dysfunction with severe hemodynamic compromise, prosthetic valve infection, invasion beyond the valve leaflets, recurrent systemic embolization, large mobile vegetations, or persistent sepsis (in infective endocarditis) despite adequate antibiotic therapy. IgG4 related disease is rare, and likely underrecognized due to the lack of reliable biomarkers. Biopsy and histologic confirmation are imperative to clinch the diagnosis. Cardiac manifestations of IgG4-related disease are rare but are often related to aortopathies. Valvular disease is extremely rare as a manifestation of the disease. Treatment of IgG4 related disease includes steroids as the first line treatment. IgG4 related disease requires a multi-disciplinary approach to both diagnose and treat. Show Notes - Cardioembolic Stroke due to an IgG4-related pseudotumor Notes were drafted by Dr. Hasnie and Dr. Morgan IgG4-related disease has a very diverse presentation including mimicry of infection, malignancy and other autoimmune conditions. It is a fibroinflammatory condition that results in deposition of IgG4 positive plasma cells. It has been described in multiple organ systems including the pancreas, kidneys, lungs and salivary glands. Cardiac manifestations are extremely rare and valvular disease even more so. There are thirteen cases of IgG4 related valvular disease, and of these only two had mitral valve involvement such as this case. The most commonly reported cardiovascular manifestations are related to aortopathies. This disease remains poorly understood at this point. There are no true biomarkers that can be used to risk stratify the diagnosis for clinicians. Biopsy is imperative to the diagnosis. Even serum IgG4 levels are normal in 30% of cases despite meeting histologic criteria on biopsy making the diagnosis incredibly difficult to make. While guidelines have not been developed to guide treatment of IgG4-related disease, steroids are considered the first line treatment option for patients. Often times dosing is 2-4 weeks with a prolonged taper. When looking for glucocorticoid sparing agents, azathioprine, mycophenolate mofetil, and methotrexate are considered alternatives. References - Cardioembolic Stroke due to an IgG4-related pseudotumor 1. Kamisawa T, Funata N, Hayashi Y, et al. A new clinicopathological entity of IgG4- related autoimmune disease. J Gastroenterol 2003;38:982-4. 2. Deshpande V, Zen Y, Chan JK, et al. Consensus statement on the pathology of IgG4-related disease. Mod Pathol. 2012;25(9):1181-1192. doi:10.1038/modpathol.2012.72 3. Dahlgren M,